The Woman
by Isilien Elenihin
Summary: She is 'the woman' to both of them. 11/Rose, Amy, River, Sherlock, John, Mycroft, Ianto Jones, Lois Habiba
1. Chapter 1

It's just a means to an end, she tells herself, and her body is just a body. She's learned that over the years, years she's spent surviving in a universe that is NOT her own with a man who is NOT her father. She puts on her makeup like armor, chooses her clothes like weapons, because she will do anything to get back to her Doctor. There was hope in the beginning, just after she was stuck in this place, but Pete sidelined the Dimension Canon years ago. It was taking valuable time and resources away from other projects, he claimed, important projects: repairing the damage that the Torchwood in Rose's original universe had done to the environment in this alternate world, cleaning up the last of the Cyberfactories that mad Lumic had made—and duplicating alien technology, of course.

She had no allies in Torchwood; Jake barely knew her and Mickey, while sympathetic, only reminded her that the Doctor himself told Rose that it was impossible. Of course he had, but he _liked_ impossible. It was what he did, what _they_ did every day. And he'd just given up. She wasn't about to. She was Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth, the valiant child, the lost girl—and the Bad Wolf. She ate impossible for breakfast.

It has taken her _years_ to come this far. When she looks in the mirror she almost doesn't recognize her face, and she wonders briefly if the Doctor would realize who he is looking at if he could see her now. She tried every other way, she really did, but after Pete told her, flat out, that there was _no way in hell_ he would allow her anywhere near the Dimension Canon technology she knew that traditional methods couldn't get her what she wants. She isn't a genius, not like Adam was, and she's not good with computers, not like Mickey, and she's definitely not an expert on temporal physics, like the Doctor, and she can't trust anyone.

It's far more sinister than she realized, this alternate universe. There's curfews and soldiers on the street corners with machine guns, and looming over everything the stylized 'T' that represents Torchwood. They've done good, she has to acknowledge, a lot of good—but absolute power corrupts absolutely, and she thinks that Pete might be finding this out. She tried telling her mum, tried _showing_ her, but Jackie was happy and in love and she wouldn't hear a word that Rose said. When she dared to suggest that Pete was wrong, that what they were doing was wrong she got a slap for her trouble.

That was when she left, because she wanted her mum to be happy and if living in a fantasy world was what it took, well, she wouldn't spoil it. Not yet, and not like that. She was alone, cut off from her friends and her family—but she is brave, and clever (even if she isn't a genius) and desperate, and not too proud to use what she has. Rose Tyler is beautiful, after all. Years of running with the Doctor have kept her fit and toned her body to perfection, and she's cast off the last of her baby fat at last, lost the round cheeks she had when she first met him. She is fierce and mysterious and she's spent the last two years of her life in the presence of one of the most powerful beings in the multiverse—little, if anything can phase her.

She moves out of London and picks a new name. As ever, it is the Doctor who gives her the inspiration. He'd always loved Sherlock Holmes and would rhapsodize about Conan Doyle's brilliance and that of the instructor on which he based Holmes. He often paid special attention to the only woman of note, according to the famous detective—the only woman to beat him. It is slow, her transition from Rose Tyler, former Torchwood agent to Irene Adler, professional scolder, but it is lucrative and occasionally pleasant. This world with its rules and restrictions closes around her throat like a noose and in her position she finds a strange sort of freedom. It isn't proper, what she does, and that gives her power—because powerful men and women like her. They like her breasts and her lips and her thighs and the way she handles a riding crop. And she, well, she likes the leverage.

* * *

She doesn't realize at first that the books which the Doctor so loved are _real_ here, that there is a brilliant man named Sherlock Holmes who is halfway towards discovering that he is on the side of the angels not because it's a challenge, but because he believes it is _right_. Here there is a Mycroft Holmes who runs the government under the auspices of Vitex Industry because he believes that controlling the population is the only way to minimize suffering. Here there is a James Moriarty who finds a reason to survive for a little longer, at least, in the quest to break a rival on the harsh flagstones of what he believes to be reality.

She doesn't realize that Sherlock is real—until she needs him. Until she has worked for years, followed leads and discovered what thousands of people with little bits of information like and exploited that. Until she is standing at the precipice with all the bits and pieces that will make the Canon work—until all she needs is a man who can put them together. Then, then she hears the name of Sherlock Holmes whispered in dark circles as a man who likes puzzles and challenges.

A smile curves her lips as she regards herself in the mirror. She has always been fond of a challenge.


	2. Chapter 2

The Woman part II

There are days when Amelia Pond can't imagine living anywhere besides the TARDIS; when the wonders of the universe lay themselves at her feet and effervescent joy fills her—from the tips of her toes to the ends of her fiery red hair. There are days when she witnesses the very best of humanity: courage, sacrifice, generosity, love; days when she thinks that she understands why the Doctor loves Earth and why one of the most powerful beings in all of creation watches over the human race like a benevolent (if slightly mad) uncle. Then there are days like today, days when she wants to crawl beneath the covers of her bed like a child and hide from the world; days when the universe is a grungy, petty place and all of its ugliness is shoved in her face. There are days when she can read the disappointment in the Doctor's eyes and she wonders why he bothers with one single, petty planet that revolves around a single, unremarkable sun in one infinitesimally small corner of the universe.

The TARDIS is in her night cycle but Amy can't sleep. Her room is too quiet and she wonders why her bed has an upper bunk. There is only her, after all, has ever only been her in this room and on this ship, traveling with the Doctor. She is exhausted (getting kidnapped always has that effect, she's noticed) but sleep refuses to come. When she closes her eyes she sees the Doctor's face as he grips her shoulders and orders her to remember—what? She wracks her mind, has been for _hours_, but the answer eludes her. Amy punches her pillow and glares at the glowing numbers of the clock on her bedside table. Finally she sighs and pushes the covers back. Perhaps the Doctor is still awake. She hasn't forgotten the little red box with what can only be an engagement ring nestled inside. Who is it for? A friend, he'd said, but he'd given her no other clues. Is it for River? No, Amy decides, he is still nervous and distrustful of the woman who claims to be intimately acquainted with his future self.

Amy slips her favorite dressing gown on over her nighty and pads out into the hall in search of the Doctor. The TARDIS is vast and confusing and just a bit mad, like her pilot, Amy thinks with a smile. There are rooms and hallways in every direction and she has no idea how far they stretch. She tried to find the end of the ship when she first came onboard, but after the Doctor found her holed up in one of the twenty or so auxiliary kitchens she'd given up. He, apparently, never got lost. Something about the TARDIS's telepathic field and his superior Time Lord biology. Amy can't remember exactly, but he'd had that smug look on his face that drove her up the wall. For a nine hundred year old alien he is really _such_ a bloke sometimes.

She is almost to the library when an unfamiliar voice drifts through the air. Someone is singing. Amy frowns. She's never heard the Doctor sing before (and the voice is female, besides) and River has professed to be tone deaf several times (usually when a quick ditty would get them released from prison or expressing oneself in prose is illegal). It's not a bad voice, she decides: sweet and rich but unpolished. There are no fancy flourishes, just a pure tone and a joy that is almost palpable.

Amy changes direction and heads for the voice—which appears to be in the vicinity of the control room. Is the Doctor having an adventure without her? She works out a little speech on the way, to properly chastise him for trying to leave her out of the fun—but the words freeze in her throat.

The Doctor stands off to one side of the console. His jacket hangs over the railing and his sleeves are rolled up to his elbows. She's never seen him with so little clothing and even though he's still more than decent according to 21st century Earth standards he looks—naked. Vulnerable. She's not used to seeing him look vulnerable, not the Doctor. He's always been larger than life, ever since she first met him when she was seven years old and he fixed the crack in her wall. He leans against the railing, eyes fixed on the scene before him, and Amy believes that he is _old_. He doesn't look it, not usually. He's got the face of a twelve year old, practically, although his eyes will give him away. There's a depth to them that she's never seen in anyone else, a depth and an edge that cuts like broken glass. Fine lines crinkle around his eyes and the corners of his mouth. His shoulders are rounded, almost slumped and he looks old and tired and _worn_.

Amy follows the line of his gaze and blinks. The front of the console room is gone. In its place is what appears to be an exact replica of the kitchen, right down to the vibrant red dish towel that hangs from the oven's handlebar. The floor is the same smooth wood. The cabinets match the floor and the countertops match the red and yellow tile backsplash. The sink is the same: huge and deep and phenomenal for doing dishes, although Amy never has. The TARDIS takes care of it, the Doctor told her, and that was that. The same curtains (gauzy white things that do absolutely nothing to block out light) frame a window that looks out on a field of wildflowers. It's impossible, of course, but it's a nice touch and what on the TARDIS _isn't_ impossible?

Which brings her to the only difference between the kitchen she knows and the kitchen in front of her: there is an unfamiliar woman standing in this kitchen. She's facing away from Amy and doing something with the sink. She might actually be washing dishes, Amy realizes, but that's not important (unless it is—the whole scene is so incongruous that she's not sure). What is important is that _she_ is the one who is singing. The girl's blonde hair hangs down in loose waves just past her shoulders and brushes her baby pink hoodie, which matches, Amy notes with a grin, the girl's fluffy bunny slippers. The image (and it can only _be_ an image) shakes slightly and zooms in closer and a distinctly masculine chuckle drifts through the still air of the console room.

The girl tenses and whirls to face the camera. For a moment Amy freezes because it's all so incredibly _real_—but then the camera shakes again.

"Git!" the girl cries and flings a dish towel toward the photographer.

"Oi!" the invisible man objects. "Not the hair!"

A wide grin split's the girls face. Her eyes are a rich, chocolate brown and her mouth is just a tad too wide and her jaw just a bit too strong, but when she's smiling she's beautiful. "You daft alien," she says, but affection colors the words, makes them a term of endearment instead of an insult.

"That depends entirely on where you're standing," the man points out. "And besides," he continues, "you love it."

Her expression softens, folds into something warm and tender enough to make Amy's breath catch. "Yeah," the girl murmurs. "I do." The image freezes and the Doctor stretches out a hand, holds it in the air centimeters from the girl's face—and then his shoulders slump and his hand falls to hang limply at his side.

"Bad night?" a soft voice inquires. Amy starts and nearly falls down the stairs. River is leaning against the railing just behind her, curly hair tied back and her arms crossed over her chest. She's wearing a sleek black dressing gown and her wicked blue eyes are sad.

She should ask what the woman is doing here, but Amy has learned to accept River Song at face value. She's always doing the impossible, even for them, and that's saying something. "Bad day," Amy corrects and she can't suppress her shudder. Being sucked underground will give her nightmares, she is sure, and thinking of the Silurian that Elliot killed makes her feel vaguely ill. But—and this confuses her—there is love too, and a strange sort of grief that lodges in her throat when she looks at the bunk beds in her room and the way the girl is smiling in the frozen hologram. "Who is she, River?"

"I don't know," River admits. Amy stares. River has always known, not about a particular person or planet or adventure, but about the Doctor. She knows all of his secrets, especially the ones that make him squirm—or so Amy thought.

River's lips press into a thin line and she will not meet Amy's eyes. "He never mentions her name, but when a day goes wrong, when the universe is cruel and he can't save anyone—he remembers her." They stand in silence for a while, but then River gives her head a sharp shake and plasters on a smile that doesn't reach her eyes. "Come on, let's have a cuppa. He's going to be a while."

Amy follows the mysterious woman down the hall, but she can't help looking back to the Doctor and the ache tightens in her chest. Something is lost—and it cannot be found.

* * *

John Watson is sitting on a couch in the People's Palace, next to the most brilliant man he has ever met; man who is, at the moment, wrapped in a bedsheet. His clothes (shirt, jacket, trousers, socks, and belt) lay in a crisply folded pile on the glass-topped coffee table in front of them. John looks at the clothes, then at his friend, and then back to the clothes.

"Sherlock," he begins. "Are you wearing pants?"

Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective and actual five year old rolls his eyes. "No," he replies shortly.

This fails to phase John. After living with the strange, extraordinary man who has become one of his closest friends for a year very little surprises him at all. "Right." He gives his head a bit of a shake. "Okay." He glances around and can't stop an incredulous smirk from flickering across his face.

"What?" Sherlock asks with a sideways glance.

"I'm in the people's palace!" he exclaims. "I dunno, I just wanna steal an ash tray or something." Sherlock snickers at that. "So," John continues once he manages to get his hilarity under control. "Why are we here?"

The door at the end of the room opens with a discrete creak and Mycroft Holmes steps through. "I think we're about to find out," Sherlock comments.

* * *

One hilarious argument later (and really the only normal thing about Sherlock is the blistering resentment he feels towards his older brother) and John watches Sherlock peruse a sheaf of—interesting—pictures. A woman features prominently in each of them. She is pretty, in a fierce sort of way. Her long blonde hair falls in soft waves around her face, or is pulled into a tight, severe bun, or isn't blonde or long. Her lips are a deep, vibrant red and her smoky brown eyes stare out boldly, challenging and enticing all in one. She is wearing hardly any clothing—lingerie mostly, soft satin and or tight, smooth leather and there are a few (profile shots through a fabric screen, mostly) where she isn't wearing anything at all. They're the sort of pictures John is used to keeping in a locked folder on his computer or perhaps beneath his mattress, not out in the open and certainly _not_ when others are present.

"Irene Adler," Mycroft remarks as he fiddles with his ever-present brolly. "Known professionally as 'The Woman.' She specializes in, shall we say, recreational scolding." A diffident knock breaks the heavy silence. Mycroft glances up. "Come in," he calls, and a smartly dressed young man enters. He carries a teapot, three coups, and assorted biscuits on a highly polished silver tray. "Ah." The corners of Mycroft's mouth tug up into a passable imitation of a smile. "Thank you, Ianto."

"Sir," the young man acknowledges. He pours the tea with practiced ease, somehow managing to make the motions appear elegant. John doesn't need Sherlock to tell him that the man has had considerable unarmed combat training. There's an awareness that comes with such training and it's written all over his body language.

"Is tea preparation standard Torchwood training?" Sherlock asks, one eyebrow raised.

John frowns. "Torchwood?" He'd pegged Ianto as secret service, MI5 maybe, but Torchwood? Soldiers love to speculate and he'd heard a fair amount of speculation related to the ultra-secret government agency, but that's all it had ever been—speculation. Anything related to Torchwood is _beyond_ classified.

"Ianto is my personal assistant," Mycroft replies mildly.

Sherlock sniffs. "Getting old, are we? Since when do you need an assistant, Mycroft?"

"I do anything and everything that Mr. Holmes requires," Ianto informs them, his face a mask of polite neutrality. "Including make the tea and occasionally bury the bodies." A sharp, synthesized 'beep' interrupts the conversation before Sherlock can formulate a suitable retort. John is absurdly grateful. Sherlock raises snarking to an Olympic sport and Mycroft takes it to the level of art and he _really _doesn't have the patience to deal with that today. Ianto and Mycroft both check their phones. Mycroft's face twists like he's smelled something foul and Ianto's lips press into a thin line. "Excuse me," he murmurs and withdraws.

Sherlock casts an appraising look at his brother, who rolls his eyes. "He is _supremely _organized," Mycroft huffs with some irritation. "And the way elections are going—" He snaps his mouth shut.

Sherlock smirks. "Need all the help you can get?" he asks innocently.

"Of course I do," his brother shoots back. "I called you in, didn't I?"

"Yes," John agrees, trying to get the conversation away from whatever Mycroft is doing to manipulate the government and back to why he and Sherlock are in the People's Palace. "Why was that, again?"

"Miss Addler has some compromising photos featuring certain high-ranking government officials." Disapproval and distaste fairly drip from Mycroft's voice. "I would prefer to let them lie in the bed they have made, but the President would like to avoid the—unpleasantness—that will follow."

Mycroft isn't the only one who needs all the help he can get, John knows. The economy is bad, has been since the cyberwar ended. So many resources had been devoted to fighting the remnants of Lumic's twisted creations that once they vanished people were—lost. Confused. Peter Tyler had gotten them through the battles, had been elected President of the People's Republic of Great Britain almost unanimously. Winning the peace, however, is vastly different from winning the war and people aren't taking kindly to Tyler's heavy-handed policies and rigid insistence on obedience. There have been letters in papers, protests, even the whisper of riots.

Sherlock is unmoved. "Pay her, then," he replies with a shrug. "Pay her whatever she's asking."

Mycroft lays his umbrella across his lap. "She hasn't asked for anything."

Sherlock's demeanor shifts abruptly. He leans forward, elbows resting on his knees and fingers steepled in front of his face. His eyes are unfocused and distant and John knows they are taking the case. Sherlock spends the majority of his time running from boredom. Even his profession, consulting detective, was devised to allow him to remain occupied. John has seen addicts before (Harry has given him a lifetime of experience) and he's familiar with Sherlock's behavior. He's addicted to the adrenaline rush he gets from solving a case and he's brilliant enough that ordinary life isn't enough for him.

"Nothing?" Sherlock demands.

The corner of Mycroft's mouth curls into the barest of smirks. "Absolutely nothing at all. She contacted us, provided proof that the pictures exist, and has done nothing since."

Sherlock stands. "I'll text you tonight," he tells Mycroft, his voice clipped and dry. His eyes narrow, just a tad. John has seen this look so many times; it's the look Sherlock gets when he's running through a case in his head. "Twelve hours should be enough time to retrieve the pictures."

"You'll take it?" Mycroft asks, his expression oddly intent.

"Yes, yes," Sherlock replies, rolling his eyes. "Go back to buying off politicians, or whatever it is you do to keep Peter Tyler in office. It must be positively exhausting."

* * *

The text message comes just as she is finishing her breakfast. The nature f her work necessitates an extremely flexible schedule and allows her to indulge her natural propensity for late rising. It's a mutually beneficial arrangement and one she quite enjoys. Rose reaches into the pocket of her dressing gown (her favorite, a screaming red bit of silk that feels lovely against her skin) and pulls out her mobile. It's the same one that the Doctor modified, so many years ago. It was from the future in the first place, which helps because it's only slightly out of date for her present. She should get rid of it—it's a reminder of her old life, a tie to who she was, but she can't bring herself to throw it away. It has pictures of her mum and Mickey on the estate, of the Doctor when he came for Christmas dinner just after he regenerated and of the two of them standing on alien planets beneath alien skies. It's the only thing she has, literally the only thing, and she will not part with it.

"I'm sending you a present," she reads aloud. There's a picture attachment. She opens it, of course. The text is from Ianto and that can mean only one thing: Sherlock Holmes is on the case.

"I don't like this plan," Lois says from across the table. Lois Habiba is many things: friend, confidante, personal assistant, and Rose's contact with the Preachers. She knows that Peter Tyler, like most of the PRGB thinks they're gone, disbanded since the cyberwar ended. He couldn't be more wrong. The Preachers never left, not really. The majority of their members went on to work for Torchwood or returned to their previous life after the last of Lumic's factories went down, but a few remained. Lumic, after all, had been only one man and he had managed to nearly destroy the world. What chaos could Torchwood cause if it went unchecked?

They watched and they waited, and when they saw Peter Tyler, saw what he was becoming—they knew it was time. She had happened on them by chance, really, but she knew they could help her and she most certainly could help them. It has worked out well, their arrangement. She procures information and they help her to infiltrate Torchwood, put her in contact with people who are sympathetic and who can help. Now she has all the pieces at her fingertips, she just needs to know one more detail and then she's free.

"It's the best we've got," she reminds Lois for the thousandth time. Lois does not look convinced, but she sips her tea and allows Rose to study the photos of Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective, and Dr. John Watson. They're not bad looking, either of them. Sherlock is tall and absurdly pale. He's got a long black trench coat that makes her smile and cheekbones sharp enough to cut her if she slapped him. Dr. Watson is shorter, blond, and steady as a rock. His clothing is practical, comfortable, and utilitarian. There's a symmetry between the two of them that makes tears burn in the back of her throat. She remembers what it's like to be one half of a pair.

"There's got to be another way." Lois sets her mug down on the smooth wooden table top.

"We have a deal," Rose reminds the other woman, her voice sharp. "This is part of the deal."

"I'm well aware of that," Lois replies tartly. "Doesn't mean I have to like it." They maintain a stony silence for several seconds, and then Lois sighs. She's always the first to break. Rose has walked across worlds, traveled to places that are impossible and sent the Devil back to hell. She's given her life and been given it back. She doesn't back down. "Be careful," Lois says after a while. "He's slippery and very, very good."

Rose snaps her phone closed and slips it back into her pocket. "So am I."

* * *

She chooses her outfit like a painter chooses her brush or a soldier chooses her weapon. She knows how Sherlock works, knows he will be watching her for the smallest clue he can use against her. The success of her plan necessitates that she remain a mystery to him; that she keep him off balance for as long as possible. She needs him dazed and uncertain and intrigued. To that end she tries on dozens of outfits and discards them all. There is a fatal flaw with each and every one, some hint that will show her hand and send him running.

"Bloody hell," Lois grouses as Rose rejects another outfit. "If picking an outfit is this much trouble maybe you shouldn't wear one at all."

Rose pokes her head out of her dressing room. "Say that again," she commands, eyes bright and completely focused on Lois.

"If choosing an outfit is so hard maybe you should just go naked," the other woman repeats.

"That's _brilliant_!" Rose grins one of her rare, tongue touched grins, the kind she gave out so freely when she traveled with the Doctor. Lois has been her handler through the Preachers for five years. It is the first time she's ever seen the expression.

* * *

One hour later her nails have been freshly painted a deep crimson to match her lipstick and the rest of her makeup is immaculate and lightly done; she wants the focus on her mouth, not her eyes. Her hair (still blonde) cascades elegantly over one shoulder and strappy red Louboutins adorn her feet. Rose likes red. It's a hard color, a strong color, the color of love, yes, and also of blood. She's spilled some now, hers others', it doesn't matter. She stares at herself in the mirror and hardly recognizes her reflection. Where is the little girl in love who left bits of herself in the hands of man who could feel the turn of the Earth and the flow of time through the universe? Where is the woman who held her father's hand when he died and had the strength to help the man who made her mother cry? If the Doctor could see her now, as she is, could see everything she has had to do, everything she has had to become—would he still want her?

"Stop that," she tells herself firmly. There is no room for doubts, not now. She's come so far; the only way to go is forward.

The doorbell buzzes and she listens as Lois follows the script they worked out to the letter. He's clever, _oh_ he's clever but he's arrogant too, can't believe that someone (especially, perhaps, a woman) could get the drop on him. Lois shows him into the sitting room and Dr. Watson to the kitchen, ostensibly for a first aid kit. Rose straightens her back and takes a deep breath. Showtime.

* * *

She very nearly laughs when she sees him perched in the chair, looking flustered and disheveled and mildly panicked. There's a cut on his cheek and a lovely bruise forming around one eye. He's got a bit of white at his collar to mark him as a vicar and really, it's just too funny. The act falls away, though, when she strides into the room, naked as the day she was born. He's quick, she'll give him that. And he knows when the game is up.

"It's so hard to remember an alias when you've had a fright, isn't it?" she asks with a sympathetic pout. She saunters over, putting extra sway into the movement of her hips. He doesn't look down; his eyes don't even flicker towards her breasts or the place where her thigh meet.

Iron control, this one.

She's broken stronger.

And when she finds the Doctor again—well. He's in for a surprise.

Rose pulls her thoughts back to the present as she reaches down and plucks the little strip of plastic Sherlock has in his collar. She holds it up with a grin, and then lets it fall to the floor. "Now that we're both defrocked," she murmurs and straddles his legs, her hands on his shoulders. "Mr. Sherlock Holmes."

"Miss Irene Adler, I presume?" The fluster is gone from his voice, but he regards her like she is a poisonous snake poised to strike. She licks her lips.

Dr. Watson chooses that moment to make his appearance, of course. He's carrying a bowl of water and a towel—probably for that cut on Sherlock's face—and so he doesn't realize what he's walked in on until he's halfway to them. When he raises his eyes he stops so suddenly that water sloshes out of the bowl and onto the floor.

"Oh." He says and averts his eyes. Rose cocks an eyebrow and nibbles on her bottom lip. "I've missed something haven't I?"

She climbs off of Sherlock, who looks a bit confused. Good. She needs to keep him on uneven ground. Once he gets his feet under him she'll have to move quickly and there are still a few guests who haven't arrived. "Please," she says with a wave of her hand, "sit down." There is no need to be rude, after all. She folds herself into an armchair, crossing her legs and then her arms over her chest so that she is mostly covered. "If you'd like some tea I can ring the maid," she offers.

"I had some at the palace," Sherlock replies, his voice flat and his eyes narrowed just a tad.

Rose regards him evenly. "I know."

"Clearly," he replies in the same tone, and his eyes narrow further. For several long minutes they remain frozen, weighing each other. Rose tilts her head slightly to the left and Sherlock mimics her. She shifts slightly, flashes just a hint of her breasts and a muscle in his jaw twitches.

"I had tea at the palace too, if anyone's interested," John interjects, just to break the silence. It's working. Her plan is really working. She wants to jump up and down and shriek her joy to the heavens, but she manage to limit herself to a smirk. Sherlock glances between Rose and John and she can almost hear the wheels in his brain turning.

She leans forward and elbow on her knee, head resting on her palm. "Do you know the problem with a disguise, Mr. Holmes?" He raises one eyebrow and pointedly does not look down. "It's always a self-portrait, no matter how hard you try." She leans back. "It's why I don't bother."

He snorts. "You think I'm a vicar with a bleeding face?"

"I think you're delusional and believe in a higher power," she snaps back. "In this case—yourself." Sherlock does not reply. Instead he unfastens the top two buttons of his shirt. The fake collar is gone, after all, and there is no reason to keep up pretenses. Rose studies his face and then smiles. "Someone loves you," she remarks. "If I had to punch you I'd avoid your nose and teeth too." She raises and eyebrow and glances back to Dr. Watson for confirmation. He refuses to meet her eyes and his skin is tinged a faint pink.

"Could you put some clothes on, maybe?" he asks with feigned lightness.

"Feeling a bit exposed, Dr. Watson?" she asks archly.

"Anything at all," he continues. "A napkin."

Sherlock stands and removes his coat. "I don't think John knows where to look."

Rose ignores him. He's being boring, after all, but she does love to tease, especially when the subject is _so_ easily flustered. "I think he knows exactly where," she murmurs and sidles closer. Dr. Watson remains rigid in his chair, his eyes fixed on a point just over her left shoulder. She turns after a moment and faces Sherlock. "I'm not so sure about you, though." She lets him settle the coat on her shoulders and memories flood back, memories of other coats (light brown, softer than it looks, smelling of books and ink and dust and a little bit like oranges; and worn leather, still warm from his body, smelling of peppermint aftershave and engine grease).

"If I wanted to look at a naked woman I'd borrow John's lap top," he sniffs and returns to his seat.

"You _do_ borrow my laptop," John points out a bit sharply.

"I _confiscate_ it," Sherlock replies. Watching them is fascinating and she could do it for ages. Something inside her, something she's locked away for its own protection recognizes the flow of their relationship, the effortless sort of pattern they've fallen into. Because being a couple has nothing to do with sexuality and even less to do with sex. It has a very great deal to do with trust and affection and respect and generosity and sacrifice. In her profession she has quite a lot to do with sex, but very little to do with partnership and she remembers a time when it was the other way around.

She laughs, she can't help it. They're delightful to watch and it's making her feel just a bit guilty about what she's going to do (not guilty enough to stop, of course, but it's a shadow of a doubt where none existed before).

"Something funny?" Sherlock asks. He's irritated and it seeps into his voice. Oh, he doesn't take being laughed at well. She catalogues that for future use.

"Just you," she replies and rises from her armchair with sinuous grace. She stalks over to him and lets the coat fall open so that it swirls dramatically behind her. Her red, red lips curve into a lupine grin as she looks him up and down. "I specialize in men like you."

"Men like me?" His eyebrow jerks up and he smirks at her, the very picture of arrogant assurance. "There are no men like me."

Her eyes sharpen and her eyebrow mirrors his. She places on hand on each of the armrests of Sherlock's chair and leans down. His eyes remain firmly fixed on hers, although his head tilts slightly to the side—almost as if he's recalculating. "Damaged, arrogant, emotionally stunted genius with a penchant for trouble and a problem with authority?" she asks, her voice low and breathy. "Mr. Holmes, you were _made_ for me."

He swallows compulsively. She thinks for a moment that this is it—he'll shatter and it will have been so easy and so terribly, terribly disappointing. Really, she was hoping for more of a struggle.

"Hamish!" John exclaims loudly. When they both turn to look at him he shrugs. "In case you were, you know, thinking about baby names."

"We both know you're here for the pictures, Mr. Holmes," she says in her most reasonable tone, "but you're not going to get them." She arches her back, presses her breasts just a bit closer to him. "Why don't we have a little fun, make it so your visit wasn't _completely_ wasted?"

"Sure of that, are you?" he asks with the sudden flash of a grin.

"Positive," she replies, her voice making the word absolutely filthy.

He leans in towards her, so close that she can feel the warmth of his breath against the shell of her ear. "I _am_ going to leave with the pictures—and you're going to give them to me."


	3. Chapter 3

a/n: Nothing you recognize belongs to me! This was supposed to be a three-parter, but it decided that four parts would be better. As always, enjoy!

* * *

Rose's phone is in the safe; it always is, when she's not expecting a call or a text from Ianto. It's far too important to be left lying around, after all. There are secrets on her phone that can ruin individuals and (hopefully) topple governments. Sherlock tricks the location of the safe (concealed behind an ornately framed mirror set into the wall above the fully-functional fireplace) out of her with a bit of newspaper and a lighter. He is insufferably smug about it, of course, but she doesn't mind. The thrill of the hunt is back and _this_ is what she lives for: the adrenaline rush of finding a challenge or (once upon a time) seeing an alien planet or just holding _his_ hand. Sherlock doesn't get to press his advantage, though, because her last guests arrive precisely on time.

Two men in nondescript dark clothing burst into the room as Sherlock studies the keypad of her safe. John holds up his hands when the men pull their guns but Rose takes her cue from Sherlock and remains still but unafraid. They're not here to kill her; they need her alive. Sherlock simply behaves as if the guns don't exist, as if the men are nothing more than minor irritations—until they threaten Dr. Watson. She wonders for a moment if the intruders—American, from their accents—realize what they've just unleashed (_I'm coming to get you _and_ No power on earth can stop me_ and _Give her back to me_ circle in her mind like vultures over a kill). She understands now why the Doctor hates guns so much, and why the intruders are in more trouble than they can possibly understand: a clever man is never unarmed, and a clever man can do more damage by thinking than a thousand men with machine guns—but give a person a gun and they start to think with it.

Sherlock tries to reason with them, to protest that he doesn't know the code, that she hasn't given it to him—but that's not quite true.

"He has it," she says, when they let her get a word in edgewise. "I've told him."

The look he gives her is positively _dripping_ with venom but she cocks an eyebrow at him and glances down at her body (still wrapped in his coat) meaningfully. His eyes widen. She smirks at him. John looks back and forth between them, well, as much as he can with a gun pressed to the back of his head. He's got the same expression she's seen so many times before (lifetimes ago), the expression that says, quite clearly, that she's mad and he's mad and John must be mad for having anything to do with the pair of them. He loves it, though, or he wouldn't be here.

Sherlock turns back to the safe and presses four buttons. His shoulders tense the slightest bit and she knows he's heard the muffled 'click' of the gun inside the safe cocking. There are two codes. Both of them open the safe, but one of them triggers a small pistol to load and, when the safe is opened, to fire. Can't be too careful, after all.

"Vatican cameos!" he shouts and dives to the side as he pulls open the safe. It's a strange code word, but it works. The bullet catches the first intruder solidly in the shoulder—if he'd been any slower it might have actually killed him—and the man falls to the ground. Sherlock kicks his gun away and delivers a swift blow to his stomach.

Rose is moving before the bullet hits. She grabs the gun trained on Dr. Watson and whirls, twisting and pulling. She has the man on his knees at gun point as Sherlock's foot connects with his intruder's stomach a second time. John is up in a flash and binding the man's hands together with a bit of twine, but that's no surprise. She's read his file; it's not as thick as Sherlock's but it's telling. He was in Afghanistan, wounded in the line of duty and received an honorable discharge. He's described as dependable, solid, and practical—and he's a first-rate marksman. If she was hunting dangerous criminals she'd want someone like Dr. Watson at her back.

She realizes that he's watching her as he knots the string one last time. There's a look in his eyes, a calculating, measuring sort of look. Sherlock might be the genius, but John Watson is clever too and he can put a puzzle together on his own. Rose flips the gun in her hand—the motion is practiced and familiar—and the intruder's eyes roll back in his head as the butt connects with his temple. He slides to the floor, unconscious.

"That was well done," John comments as he lets her pull him to his feet. Sherlock has returned to the safe.

"I make my living by misbehaving, Dr. Watson," she points out. "Protecting myself is occasionally necessary." Sherlock pulls her phone out of the safe. "There's a back entrance, Dr. Watson," she says a bit more sharply than she'd intended. "Give that a look, would you?"

He blinks. "Yeah, okay." And then he strides away.

"I think you'll find that's mine," Rose remarks and holds out her hand.

Sherlock smirks. "Oh, I don't think so." He pockets the phone and moves to step around her, but she doesn't let him.

"That phone is my _life_," Rose scoffs. "D'you really think I'll just let you walk off with it?"

"Yes," he replies after a moment. "I think that's exactly what you're going to do."

He's wrong, of course. She follows him to her bedroom (not really hers, but the one she uses with clients). It's located on the second store and the fire escape is just out the window. Her more paranoid clients prefer to use that entrance, occasionally. It makes Rose feel a bit like Rapunzel, but that's neither here nor there. She palms a syringe when he turns his back (and really he is _far_ too confident—if she'd been truly hostile he would have been dead just then).

It's nothing _too_ harmful, just a mild sedative she keeps on hand as insurance. Some of her client can get—difficult. There are a few (arrogant, powerful people who are used to getting their own way) who come to her not to be broken, but to break. She prefers to nip that idea in the bud, without hurting anyone if possible. She bares her teeth for a moment. They forget that she is just as dangerous as they, and for all of Lois's warnings about Sherlock Holmes and his genius _Rose_ is in control of the situation. She wonders briefly if anyone took the time to warn Sherlock about _her_, and then shrugs it off. He's clever enough to figure it out by himself.

He yelps when she stabs the needle into his arm. "What?" he gasps out as his heart pumps the drug through his veins and into his brain.

"Time to sleep, Mr. Holmes," Rose replies and holds out her hand. "Now drop it."

"No," he protests. He sways slightly but clutches the phone tighter.

She grabs a riding crop from the umbrella stand next to the bed. "Drop it," she commands. When he refuses she hits him once, twice, and then he falls like some great tree. Her phone skitters across the floor and she stops it with one strappy, stiletto—heeled shoe. Sherlock opens his mouth, tries to speak, but she caresses his face with the end of the crop. "No," she croons, "don't ruin it. I want you to remember this moment, remember the day that _I beat you_."

John finds them shortly after. "What did you do?" he demands, an edge of panic to his voice as he checks Sherlock's vital signs.

"Nothing permanent, Dr. Watson," Rose assures him. She's perched on the edge of the window, poised to make her escape. "He'll sleep for a few hours and then he'll be right as rain." She flashes him a mischievous smile and then she's falling out the window. Rose lands on her feet and wraps the coat more tightly around her body. Lois is waiting to streets over with the car.

"Well?" the other woman asks as Rose slides into the back seat.

She lets herself sag back into the smooth black leather and closes her eyes. Sherlock's wool coat is scratchy against her skin, and it's too heavy and smells all wrong, but for a moment she can trick herself into believing that it's _his_. "I think we'll be hearing from Mr. Holmes again."

Lois stares at her through the rearview mirror. "You've still got his coat."

A smile spreads across her face. "I should return it, don't you think?"

* * *

The Doctor takes Amy to meet Vincent van Gogh. It's sort of a tradition, he tells her, for his companions to meet historical figures and help save them from some disaster. Martha met Shakespeare, after all, and Donna met Agatha Christie. Amy almost asks what happened to them; when he mentions Martha (and he does so, rarely) it's always with a bit of wistful embarrassment. A grin always accompanies Donna's name, and a soft "she'd love you" usually follows. Amy has _seen_ both of the women on the TARDIS monitors (tricking the Doctor into ordering the TARDIS to show her all previous companions was one of the smartest things she did that first trip)—but it's not the same. As much as he is her best friend there are times when she feels like she hardly knows him.

She almost asks him about the blonde girl, and which famous historical figure _she_ met—but then she remembers the way he reached out to the girl and the old, heavy grief evident in every line on his face and she loses her nerve. She almost asks him who the girl was and what happened to her; why he keeps videos that cause him so much pain and why he persists in making that pain fresh—but she doesn't. There are some questions Amy isn't sure she wants answered.

Vincent is amazing. He's a bit of a drunk and a lot of a hopeless romantic, but he's sweet and kind and _brilliant_. And the way he looks at the world, Amy has never seen anything like it. She knows his story, of course (she wrote a report on him for school when she was younger) but the reality is so much more _vibrant_ than she imagined. It pains her when he disparages his work. No one will buy his paintings until he's dead and it's such a pity that he never knew how much the world loves him, how popular his works are and how many lives he has touched. He never knew that he will _matter_, that he will be remembered for thousands, maybe even millions of years.

She fills his courtyard with cut sunflowers because she thinks it will make him smile. Vincent is less than enthusiastic.

"They're not my favorite flower," he comments as he examines one of the enormous blooms.

Amy blinks. "You don't like sunflowers?"

"I wouldn't say that," Vincent disagrees. "They're—complex. They turn to face the sun, constantly caught between life and death—human, in a way."

Amy touches the flower in front of her tentatively. When she looks at his paintings it's like seeing everything for the first time, like the curtain has been pulled away. It's a little like when she first started traveling with the Doctor and she realized there's a whole _universe_ out there. Vincent manages to find beauty in everything, even the most ordinary object. It's a skill Amy wishes she had, and it reminds her a bit of the Doctor. She glances at her friend and frowns as his eyes slide away. The Doctor lean against the wall of the house, arms crossed over his chest, ridiculous hair flopping around his face like a horse's mane. He's been watching her again, but only when he thinks she's not looking. Does he fancy her, after all this time? No, she decides. There's affection in his eyes, eyes, but also deep sadness and pervasive guilt. He knows something, something that relates to her, something that's bad from the way he shies away from her gaze—and he refuses to tell her. Amy's eyes narrow. She isn't accustomed to letting anyone, alien best friend or not, meddle in her life without her knowledge and she's not about to start now.

Vincent wanders back inside. The Doctor follows him and Amy follows the Doctor. It's a big day today—the day that Vincent will paint the church at Auvers—the day that he will capture in vibrant color a face the Doctor declared to be 'evil.' Today is the reason that Amy and the Doctor are here. It started yesterday (and she can't believe it's been only 24 hours). The Doctor had taken her to see a collection of Van Gogh's paintings, which was odd in itself because they haven't overthrown a dictatorship or run for their lives in over a _week_ and that's a record. It's like—like he's trying to make up for something and Amy has no idea what it could possibly be. He's taken her to Arcadia and the hanging gardens of Babylon, beautiful places that she would almost qualify as dates—except that's not how he sees her and she knows it. She'd even asked him about it—but then he'd seen a face staring out of the window of a church and they were off to save Vincent van Gogh.

The Doctor goes to check on Vincent. Amy wanders around the room, examining the paintings she didn't have a chance to study last night. There are many she's never seen before and she wonders what happened—will happen, from this perspective. There's an easel in the corner with a large painting covered in a black cloth perched atop it. Amy never could resist a 'keep out' sign, and a covered painting is nearly as good. She pulls the cloth back and gasps.

* * *

It's Christmas before John and Sherlock hear from Irene again. As soon as Sherlock recovered from the sedative she forced on him he'd gone straight to Mycroft. He told his brother to watch her carefully but to otherwise leave her alone. She wasn't using the pictures to extort money or favors—if anything she appeared to be using them as protection. Mycroft took his brother's advice—albeit grudgingly—and that was the last they would hear of Miss Irene Adler—or so John thought.

Something strange is going on with Sherlock's phone. Every day, often multiple times a day, he receives a text. This in itself is not strange, but his alert is. It had been a generic 'beep' when he and John met but now it is, well, a woman moaning. It isn't for all of his texts, either. When John or Mycroft or Greg texts Sherlock his notification is the same synthesized 'beep.' John is almost positive he knows who is texting Sherlock, but when he asks his friend Sherlock changes the subject. Every time. Without fail. Nor does he reply to the messages. He takes the phone from his pocket, checks the screen and occasionally smiles to himself, and then slips it back into his dressing gown or suit or coat.

It's refreshing, in a way, that Sherlock can have something as normal as a crush. If John had a thing for dangerous women he might even share his friend's feelings, but he prefers honesty, and the (relative) simplicity of a normal relationship. There is nothing simple about Irene Adler and he has a feeling that Sherlock likes it that way.

But it's Christmas Eve and Mrs. Hudson is throwing a party. Sherlock attends, though he insists that he hates parties and refuses to wear one of John's festive sweaters. D.I. Lestrade comes, as does John's girlfriend Jeanette and even Molly. None of them are related by blood, but it's a family gathering none the less (even if it is a little dysfunctional). Sherlock even puts his foot in it (for a genius he is _remarkably_ good at being stupid). He taunts Molly about a new boyfriend (and it is true that she looks absolutely _stunning_ in a slinky black and silver dress) but the present he claims is for the lucky man—is addressed to him. He glances to John, who looks terribly disappointed and then back to Molly, who hangs her head.

"Why do you always have to ruin it?" she murmurs sadly. For a moment the room is completely silent, but then Sherlock takes her hand.

"I'm sorry," he tells her. John blinks. It is the first time he's heard Sherlock apologize (seriously and sincerely) to _anyone_. _Ever_. Oh, he's said that he was sorry before, but it was more along the lines of 'I'm sorry you're so thick' and 'I'm sorry I'm smarter than you' and 'I'm sorry that this is obvious but you can't see it because you're not clever like me.'

Molly looks up at him, confusion and hope writ large on her face. It's barely a kiss, just a brush of his lips against her cheek, but it's the most human reaction John has ever seen.

And then Sherlock's phone moans. Molly, of course, is mortified. "That wasn't me!" she objects. "I didn't—"

"It was me," Sherlock announces. "My phone," he clarifies with an irritated frown at the shocked expressions which greet him. He pulls the phone out of his trouser pocket and glances at the screen. His brows pull together as he strides over to the mantelpiece—and removes a small, slim, box wrapped in blood-red paper and tied with a thin, shiny black ribbon. John hadn't even noticed it.

"Fifty seven," John notes.

Sherlock stares at the package. "What?"

"You've received fifty seven of those texts." John leans forward. "Do you ever reply?"

Sherlock rolls his eyes and slides the ribbon off of the box. He opens the paper at one end, carefully, as if he is at a crime scene, and tips it up. A slim, black phone falls into his hand. John frowns. He's seen that phone before, somewhere. It's odd, not a design that's popular and it sticks in his mind.

Oh. Of course. It's _her_ phone. Sherlock stares at it for a moment, and then he strides out of the main room. "Excuse me," he murmurs as he brushes past them.

"Sherlock?" John calls after him. "Sherlock, what's wrong?"

He receives no reply. So he does what any concerned friend would do—he listens at the door.

"I think you're going to find Irene Adler tonight," Sherlock says. There's a pause—he must be talking to Mycroft, there's no one else he'd discuss Irene with. "No. I think you're going to find her dead."

John takes a step back.

Oh. Well. That was—unexpected.

* * *

Amy reaches out to touch the canvas, but snatches her fingers back before they can make contact. _The Woman_ stares out at her, the one from the TARDIS, the one the Doctor remembers—but not. In the painting she is transformed. She stands with her back to some sort of light that frames the painting: vibrant flourishes of gold and white in a million shades that seem to sketch out flowing, circular designs. They're familiar—because Amy has seen them before on a thousand little post-it-notes stuck on the monitor, or the mirror, or the door of the refrigerator. She's seen the stylized circles on books and maps and the walls of the TARDIS, occasionally, in the older parts where the walls _look_ like they were grown, not built. She's watched the Doctor scratch out variations, usually whilst muttering to himself, when he's calculating or checking coordinates or maybe just writing things he'd like to remain unseen. The TARDIS won't translate, never does—because it's _his_ language. What do they say, the words that no one can read, anymore, no one but him?

Amy forces herself to look away. She can't understand it, can't even begin to try, and staring at it won't help. She examines the rest of the painting, looking for clues: something, anything to tell her who this girl was. She was from modern times and she had a fondness for pink: she's wearing a pink hoodie in the painting and black jeans. Her blonde hair swirls about her face and fades into the mass of gold and white behind her.

Her face is almost inhumanly calm, the sort of peace that Amy has seen on those in the grips of religious ecstasy and cadavers. Two blazing tears drip down her cheeks from eyes that are churning maelstroms of gold and deep brown. One hand is stretched out, palm flat and perpendicular to the floor, fingers spread like she's holding something back.

"Found a favorite, Amelia?" The Doctor's voice is loud in her ear and she jumps, startled. He grunts as her flailing arm whacks him soundly in the chest. "What was that for?" he whines and frowns at her. "I was just…" but then his eyes stray to the painting in question and he stops. Stops talking, stops breathing, stops moving for almost five full seconds—like the wind has been knocked out of him.

"Do you know her?" Vincent stands in the doorway behind them, a backpack slung over his shoulder and another easel in his hand. He's got a ridiculous straw hat on and Amy would laugh, she really would if the tension in the room wasn't suffocating.

"Yes." The Doctor's jaw clenches, like he's trying to keep the word in. "But the real question is how do _you_ know her?" He whirls around, gesturing wildly. "Because there's no way, _no conceivable way_ that you could."

Now that his fit of depression has passed Vincent is remarkably calm. "She visits me in my dreams, Doctor." He adjusts the wide brim of his hat and steps forward. Amy moves back, allows him to pass. Vincent brushes the canvas with delicate fingers, tracing the curve of the woman's cheek and the path of one incandescent tear. "She is always crying—and there's a wall, a white wall, but it's more than that. It's despair and anguish and distance." He lets his hand fall. "She is a goddess in exile, separated from everything she loves by an insurmountable wall."

Vincent has his eyes on the painting, so he doesn't see the way the Doctor's hands clench, or the way his shoulder's sag, or the way the muscle in his jaw twitches—but Amy does. And so the question comes bubbling out of her heart and over her lips before she can stop it.

"Was it for her?" she asks. The Doctor gives her a blank look. "That ring in your pocket—was it for her?"

He laughs sadly. "No, Amelia. It was for another friend."

"You have a lot of friends," Amy observes.

The Doctor straightens his bowtie. "Another friend—Sarah Jane Smith—said the same thing to me, once." A small smile curves his lips and the tension dissipates, just a bit. "She's very clever, Sarah Jane. I should take you to meet her."

"After we find the thing that was in the church window," Amy asserts.

"Yes," the Doctor agrees. "After we find it and stop it."


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: First this story was supposed to be a two-parter, then a three-parter, and then finally a four-parter, but the muse decided that one more part is necessary, so this is the penultimate update. As usual nothing you recognize belongs to me! :D I got the transcript for 'A Scandal in Belgravia' from Callie Sullivan (ariadnedevere) on livejournal. There's a paraphrased quote from 'Secret Diary of a Call Girl' in here; see if you can spot it!

* * *

The first time John Watson met Mycroft Holmes he thought the man was some sort of criminal mastermind. In his defense, instead of calling him on his mobile like a normal person Sherlock's older brother made the _payphones_ near John ring, and then proceeded to demonstrate that he could manipulate the security cameras nearby, and then had an anonymous car pull up next to him. And then told John to get into said car. As if those actions didn't scream 'criminal mastermind' loud enough the car went to an unoccupied warehouse and Mycroft proceeded to threaten John, and to attempt to bribe him to spy on Sherlock. He found out later, of course, that the strange man was actually Sherlock's older, estranged brother (and apparently the man who runs the government, but that's neither here nor there).

It's been over a year since that first meeting and a few days since Irene's death. Sherlock has not taken it well. John thought it was cute at first, that he had some sort of crush on the strange, dangerous woman but it ceased to be cute the moment Sherlock stepped into the morgue to identify her body. John is no stranger to grief. He's lost friends, comrades, in Afghanistan and he's lost his mother and father to cancer and the slow decay of age. He's seen what grief can do to a person—how it can eat them from the inside out and sometimes how it can kill them as well. So he tries to talk to Sherlock, to assess his mental status. Sherlock steadfastly refuses to admit that anything is wrong.

It's a lie, and John knows that. Sherlock picks at his food, broods for hours, studies the phone that Irene sent to him (and how did she get it onto the mantelpiece? Did she break into their flat) and composes achingly sad music. John wonders if this is his first experience with such a personal casualty. People say that he's heartless, that he's a sociopath (Sally Donovan, Anderson, and so many others), but John has never disagreed with them more. Sherlock can be cold, calculating, and downright cruel—but not heartless.

The car stops, and the attractive black woman next to John opens the door and steps out. He's given up trying to get close to any of the apparently numerous women Mycroft employs. Anthea, or whatever her name actually was, stomped out that desire, although this one gives him an appraising look as she gestures for John to follow her. His mouth quirks into an annoyed half-grin and his eyebrow rockets up. First an empty warehouse, and now Battersea Power Station. It's abandoned, but still imposing and he sighs.

"You know," he remarks to the woman when he catches up to her. "We could just meet in a café. Sherlock doesn't follow me _everywhere_." The woman throws him a look like's he's dribbled on his shirt but says nothing. John finds the silence somewhat oppressive in the still air of the empty building. Enormous machines jut out into the walkways, frozen and rusty with disuse. "Mycroft could just phone me," he tells her after they squeeze through a particularly small space. "He could, if he didn't have this bloody great _power_ complex." Still she says nothing.

When she finally does speak she stops suddenly and John almost runs straight into her. "Through there," the woman says softly and gestures at an open door just in front of them.

John gives her a dirty look. "Ta," he sniffs and walks in. It's another room, empty except for the vast machines that haven't yet been salvaged. He doesn't see the woman cradle her phone against her cheek.

"You're right," Lois says with a bit of a grin. "He thinks it's Mycroft."

* * *

John strides out into the room, scanning for any sign of another occupant. He's tired of puzzles, of the complicated games the Holmes brothers play with each other. Their relationship is so damn dysfunctional that it works, somehow, except in a crisis. Unfortunately Sherlock's line of work means there's a crisis almost every night.

"He doesn't eat," John informs the walls, " and he hardly sleeps. He barely talks—just to correct the television—and he's writing sad music. If he wasn't Sherlock Holmes I'd say he was heart-broken, but he does all of that anyway."

A series of soft 'clicks' echo through the room and John frowns, because men's shoes don't sound like that and they are definitely footsteps. A petite figure wrapped in a long, faun colored coat steps out from behind one of the machines and for a moment John can only stare. A dead woman is standing in front of him. Irene's blonde hair is pulled up and hidden beneath a large, floppy black hat. Her makeup is subdued, like her dress, but her shoes are the same screaming red strappy pumps he remembers. It's that jarring sameness that pulls him out of his shock.

"Hello, Dr. Watson." Her voice echoes off the steel and concrete that surrounds them.

"Tell him you're alive." There's no question in his voice, no pleading. It's polite, but still a command.

She shakes her head. "He'll come after me."

His lips curve up, just the hint of a sad smile. "_I'll_ come after you if you don't."

Irene regards him for a moment, and he feels strangely naked. He did then too, he remembers, when she was wearing nothing but those shoes and a red, red smile. She looks at him like she knows him, like she can pry open his mind and shake it until all the thoughts fall out, like he's a puzzle and she's got him all figured out. "I believe you," she says finally.

And then John's mind catches up to the rest of him and he's suddenly _angry_. "Hold on." His lips press close as he regards her through slightly narrowed eyes. "You were _dead_. He went down to the morgue to identify your body and that was definitely you on the slab."

She drags one perfectly manicured red nail over the rough concrete of the window ledge next to her. "DNA tests are only as good as the records you keep," she reminds him.

"And I bet you know the record-keeper," he sneers and there's the faintest suggestion of _whore_ in the way his lips twist.

Irene simply shrugs. She's used to the things that people say, and she's really stopped caring. Escort, hooker, prostitute, whore—that's all semantics, and she's tired of those sort of games. "I know what he likes," she agrees. "And I needed to disappear."

"So you look me up?" he demands. "Funny way of disappearing that is!"

She stops. "Look. I made a mistake. I left something with Sherlock for safe keeping and now I need it back. I need your help." She steps forward, her expression intent. "It's dangerous, John, for anyone who has it."

"Even you?" he asks and reminds himself that he's not going to let her distract him.

Her mouth curve into a small smile, the sort that hints at secrets. "Especially for me, but I can handle it." She tries a different track. "It's for his own safety."

"So's this." John's voice is hard and unrelenting. "Tell him you're alive."

There's a flinch, just for a moment, but he thinks he sees her careful façade crack. There's regret in her eyes and grief in the twist of her lips. "I can't."

And the anger is back. John turns away from her, his shoulders tense and his hands clenched into fists. "Then _I'll_ tell him," he snaps back at her, "and I still won't help you." He takes three steps before her voice makes him pause.

"What do I say?" She sounds tired, maybe a bit resigned.

He's still angry. "What do you _normally_ say? You've been texting him a lot."

Irene shrugs again. "Just the usual stuff."

John shakes his head. "This is Sherlock Holmes we're talking about—there is no _usual_."

She reaches into the pocket of her trench coat and pulls out another phone. It's similar to the Sherlock pulled from the mantelpiece of their flat, but not quite the same. John's never seen a phone exactly like hers. It's thin and sleek and white, with silver sides and a touchscreen and a strange logo—a shiny silver apple with a bite out of it—on the back. This one is based on Lumic's early work, before the ear-pieces and his madness. Her fingers dance across the screen and then she speaks. "Good morning. I like your funny hat. I'm sad tonight. Let's have dinner." John stares at her and his jaw is two point oh seconds from hitting the floor. "You looked sexy on 'Crimewatch.' Let's have dinner. I'm not hungry; let's have dinner. I bought a new dress—let's have dinner." She cocks an eyebrow at him expectantly.

"You _flirted_ with Sherlock Holmes?" John asks when he can find his voice again.

Irene's lips quirk. "I flirted _at_ him," she corrects. "He never replied.

John shakes his head. "No, no that's not right. He _always_ replies. He'll outlive god trying to get the last word."

She tilts her head to the side. It's adorable and a bit wistful and John has to remind himself very firmly that everything about this woman is artificial, designed to please. "Does that make me special?" she asks.

He shrugs, because god only knows what goes on in Sherlock's head, and he isn't telling. "No idea."

A smile ghosts across her lips. "Does that make you jealous?"

"For the love of—" he practically growls, and then he throws his hands up. "We aren't a couple!"

"Yes you are," she shoots back. She types something on the phone and then holds it out for John to see. "There: I'm not dead. Let's have dinner." Her thumb presses down firmly on the screen and a soft 'ping' reverberates through the room.

John regards her for a moment, watches her slip the phone back into her pocket and straighten her hat so that the white gardenia blossom tucked into the black ribbon peeks out at him over the floppy brim. "Who the hell knows about Sherlock Holmes," he says after a moment. "But for the record, I'm not gay."

She shrugs. "I never said you were." A strand of blonde hair slips out from beneath her hat and she brushes it back behind her ear. "Sex has very little to do with coupling, even though people use the words like they're interchangeable. Sex is about a lot of things: attraction, power, possession, fun, pleasure, and sometimes a bit of pain. Being part of a couple is about trust."

A breathy moan drifts out from somewhere behind the hulking machines. Understanding drains the blood from John's face and he starts forward, but Irene stretches out a hand and holds him back. "Not yet," she murmurs. "Let him go."

* * *

Hours later—after John has finally made his way back to Baker Street only to discover the remains of a foiled hostage situation (the Americans came back, apparently, with a vengeance. John could have told them that knocking Mrs. Hudson about was absolutely the worst thing they could have done to gain Sherlock's cooperation—but then no one asked him), he sits in his chair watching Sherlock stare out of the window at the people milling about below. It's New Year's eve and the symbolism of it all isn't lost on him—new beginnings, celebration, but his friend is remarkably blasé about the whole affair.

"Where is it now?" he asks. The phone is a safe topic and Irene's rebirth may not be.

Sherlock hefts his violin with one hand and picks up the bow from its place on his chair. "Where no one will look."

"There's more on there than pictures," John comments as Sherlock turns back to the window.

He raises the violin to his shoulder and his fingers twitch on the strings. "Yes, I know."

John lets him fiddle with the strings as he checks the instrument's pitch. "She's alive then." He catches the fleeting smile that curves Sherlock's lips. "How are we feeling about that?"

As always, nothing can make Sherlock Holmes answer a question he does not wish to answer. "Happy New Year, John," he says instead and sets the bow against the strings.

John gives him a look that says, quite plainly, that he is not convinced. "D'you think we'll be seeing her again?"

Sherlock, apparently tired of this line of questioning, pulls the bow across the taut strings with a flourish and the opening bars of 'Auld Lang Syne' ring through the flat. He raises an eyebrow pointedly at John, who holds up his hands in surrender. After the song is finished and John has gone out to see Harry for Christmas Sherlock pulls his mobile out of his suit jacket pocket. He studies the screen for a moment, and then types out a short message. His thumb hovers over the screen—and then a smile tugs at the corner of his lips. He presses send.

Rose is curled up on the window seat of her tiny temporary flat when her pocket buzzes insistently. She sets her mug of hot cocoa down on the windowsill and flicks a finger over the screen. A bouncing icon informs her that she has a new text message.

Happy New Year—S.H.

Rose smiles.

* * *

Months pass. A few interesting cases find their way to Sherlock Holmes: there's the millionaire who moonlighted as a beggar (and made a decent living until he was discovered by his wife and faked his own death) and the bizarre Society for the Protection of Gingers (which turned out to be a hoax to the great disappointment of the man whose flat was conveniently located for a robbery). They pique Sherlock's interest, but the knowledge that Irene Adler is alive and well throws a pall over everything. Sherlock pours over her phone, spends hours in the lab analyzing it and comes up with almost nothing. He can't break her password (he's tried, and it's not 221B) and he can't force it open to get at the data card—four conveniently placed microexpolosives will detonate if the casing is disturbed.

Sherlock paces the length of their sitting room. It's storming outside and the weather seems to echo his mood. Irene's phone lies on the coffee table between him and John. "_Why_ did she send it here?" he mutters and runs a hand through his disheveled hair. "She likes to play games, she _loves_ them, and she sent it _here_."

"Maybe she was telling the truth," John offers. "Maybe she thought it would be safe with you."

Sherlock shakes his head. "There's more to it than that, there has to be. But _what_?"

* * *

John is more surprised than Sherlock when Irene turns up in their flat—in Sherlock's bed. She's disheveled and exhausted and there are lines around her eyes and the corner of her mouth that weren't there the last time they spoke. She looks—worn and strangely vulnerable without the fine layer of makeup that hid her from the world. Sherlock is already out in the hall, and John follows, closing the door softly behind him.

After she's rested and changed (and wearing Sherlock's dressing-gown) Irene perches in Sherlock's chair. John sits across from her, like he always does when they have a client and Sherlock paces behind her. John doesn't miss the way her eyes slide from side to side, following his restless movements, or the way her shoulders tense just a hair whenever he's directly behind her. She's on edge, running scared, and how bad would something have to be to frighten her?

Sherlock begins the questioning. "So, who's after you?"

Irene raises an eyebrow. "People who want to kill me."

Sherlock leans over her shoulder. "Who's that, then?"

She twists her head and gives him a look like he's dribbled on his shirt. "Killers."

"It would help if you were a _tiny_ bit more specific," John drawls.

"I'll give you a hint," Irene replies in the same lazy, sarcastic tone he used. "You've met their boss before, charming man by the name of Moriarty. Ring any bells?"

Sherlock has resumed pacing. "So you faked your death to get ahead of them."

Irene shrugs. "It worked for a while."

"Not as long as you hoped," Sherlock interjects. "All this time you've had plans upon plans—but they caught you out."

Irene pulls her knees up under her chin and wraps her arms around her legs. "They found me. I had a safehouse prepared in the event that one of my clients became—belligerent." She worries her bottom lip with her teeth. "They killed Lois, nearly killed me."

"Lois?" John asks.

"My friend," she clarifies. "You met her." Anger lends and edge to her voice but Sherlock disregards it, as usual.

"If it was working why did you break cover?" he asks. "You let John know your secret, and through him, me."

Irene flashes him a coquettish smile. "I knew you'd keep my secret, and you did." Sherlock remains silent and she shifts impatiently, curling her legs beneath her. "Where's my phone? You didn't lose it, did you?"

"It's not here," John scoffs. "D'you think we're stupid?"

Irene leans forward. "Then what've you done with it? If they've guessed you have it they'll be watching you."

"If they've been watching me they'll know I took out a safety deposit box at a bank on the Strand a few months ago." Sherlock dismisses her concern with a sniff.

She narrows her eyes at him. "I need it."

John, of course, lays out a very clever plan to get the phone from the bank on the Strand back to Baker Street with none the wiser—but he's neatly derailed when Sherlock pulls the phone from his jacket pocket. John noticeably deflates as Sherlock deposits the phone in Irene's hands. She angles the screen away from him and types in four numbers. The phone beeps at her and her forehead creases as she frowns. "It's not working."

Sherlock swoops down and plucks it from her hands. "Of course not." He fairly radiates smug. "It's a copy I had made, to which you have just entered 1058." From his other pocket he pulls the real phone and taps the screen four times.

The phone beeps at him and it's his turn to frown. 'Wrong passcode,' the screen reads. 'One attempt remaining.'

Irene holds out her hand. "That phone is my life," she reiterates. "I _know_ when it's in my hand." She watches him expectantly, one eyebrow raised. For a long moment Sherlock stares back at her, and then grudgingly hands over the phone. Her fingers glide along the back of his as she accepts it and John rolls his eyes. Honestly—it's like teenagers all over again. He wonders for a brief moment if anyone has ever given Sherlock Holmes 'the talk' and fervently hopes that task won't fall to him.

"You're rather good," Sherlock admits and John covers a grin with his hand. Yes, exactly like teenagers.

"You're not so bad yourself," Irene replies with her tongue caught between her teeth. Her fingers flick across the screen and the phone chirps. "There was this man," she continues as she taps the phone impatiently. "Torchwood agent. I know what he likes—and part of that is showing off. He had this email, said it was going to save the world. He didn't know it, he was a bit distracted at the time, but I photographed it." She hands Sherlock the phone and stands, wrapping her arms around herself as if she is cold. "It's a bit small on that screen, can you read it?"

Sherlock sits almost absently and studies the screen. His eyes flicker over the message almost faster than John can follow and then he lifts his gaze to a spot on the wall just above the edge of the phone. John cranes his neck and frowns. The message, what little of it Irene captured, is a string of numbers interspersed at random intervals by a color (spelled out) in the first line. The second line is another string of numbers, but this time interspersed with letters at seemingly random intervals.

"It's a code, obviously." Irene leans over his shoulder so that her lips are centimeters from his ear. "I had one of the best cryptographers in the country look at it—of course, he was mostly upside down at the time—but he couldn't crack it." Her lips nearly brush the shell of Sherlock's ear and John looks away, fighting a blush. Her blatant sexuality is—unnerving. "What can you do, Mr. Holmes?" she continues, her voice a low murmur.

"Oh, it's quite simple really," Sherlock replies with a hint of a smile and more smug satisfaction than even a cat could manage.

"Of course it is," John mutters under his breath.

* * *

The Doctor is a genius; Amelia Pond knows this. He understands things that she can't even begin to grasp and has probably forgotten more than she will ever learn. He can hold up to five conversations simultaneously and out-think a super computer (he can also out-talk a member of Parliament but that's an entirely different story). She's seen him proved right so many times that she occasionally forgets that he can be wrong—completely, glaringly wrong.

He was wrong today. He was wrong about the monster they were hunting; it wasn't a monster at all. It was blind and alone, abandoned by its pack. It was frightened and lonely and lashing out. And Vincent could see it. He looked at the world in such a different way that he saw the invisible. But they couldn't save the monster—they understood too late and it was already dying—and they couldn't save Vincent either. Amy thought that going to the future, that _seeing_ how beloved he would be might help him fight off the depression that eventually claimed his life.

It didn't. He died on the same day, in the same way, as he had before. "Did it matter?" she asks the Doctor as they stand in the _Musee d'Orsay_, surrounded by people studying the beautiful paintings that hang on the walls. "Did anything we did matter?"

The Doctor takes her hand. His palm is cool and dry, as always, and there's something vaguely paternal about the way he gives it a squeeze. "Of course it mattered," he replies softly. "The way I look at it, Amy, life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don't make the bad things go away—but then the bad things don't negate the good things." He gives her a lopsided smile. "And I think we definitely added to his pile of good things."

A painting of sunflowers in a ceramic vase catches her eye, and she can't help but smile. 'For Amy' is painted along the curve of the vase. "Yeah," she says softly, tears still damp on her cheeks. "You're right." She wipes her hand across her face and chuckles weakly. "You know, if I'd said yes and we did get married, our children would have had the reddest hair."

"The ultimate ginger," the Doctor agrees with a smile of his own. "Now come along, Pond. Back to the TARDIS."

"That painting," Amelia asks after the doors have shut behind her and the Doctor has taken them into the Vortex. "What did you do with it?"

He stiffens. "Oh, it's around here somewhere. Couldn't let him keep it, you see. She's wearing twenty-first century clothing and that would muck up the time lines something fierce."

"Who was she?" Amy asks more out of habit than anything. Experience has taught her that the Doctor will tell her eventually, but not before he's good and ready. Still, it won't do to let him get complacent and think he can just hide things from her whenever he feels like it.

"You know," the Doctor says brightly, "there's a plasma storm brewing in the horsehead nebula. It happens every so often—fires burning in space a thousand miles wide. The TARDIS can ride them like waves on the ocean and we could end up anywhere." He grins at her and Amy knows that he will not answer her question. "Fancy a go?"

* * *

John wakes in the middle of the night. The flat is old and strange and he thinks there's something wrong with the vents: sometimes he can hear Mrs. Hudson watching her soaps downstairs and other times he catches snatches of the couple in the adjacent flat arguing (loudly). It's voices this time, soft enough so that he can't quite make out what they're saying, but it's a woman (Irene) and a man (not Sherlock). The hairs on the back of his neck stand to attention. There's something _definitely_ off about this.

He creeps down the stairs as quietly as he can; he skips the fifth stair (it always creaks) and nearly trips over the brolly Sherlock left leaning against the wall. He manages to catch it before it tumbles the rest of the way down and lets the whole bloody flat know he's awake, but it's a near thing. Thankfully it's the only slip-up he makes. The voices are clearer, though still soft, and it's definitely Irene. The man is—Welsh? John leans against the wall just outside the sitting room and listens.

"You're sure?" the man asks.

"Completely," Irene responds. "You should have seen him crack it, Ianto. He's a genius." She pauses. "And he was telling the truth. His solution matches up perfectly."

John is so focused on the two in the sitting room that he doesn't notice the woman guarding the door. A gloved hand clamps over his mouth and his reflexes—still sharp from working (and living) with Sherlock kick in—but the woman is good, whoever she is, and she holds fast.

"Ianto," she calls softly, her voice pitched low. "We've got a visitor."

Mycroft's assistant steps into the hall. His three piece suit is immaculate, as it was when they first met, but his expression is stern and forbidding and John thinks he can spot the bulge of a gun in the jacket pocket. Irene follows Ianto; she's changed into dark jeans and a jumper and there's a gun strapped to her side. John's eyes widen.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Watson." Just for a moment her mask slips, and he believes her. "I really am, but we can't let you run off and tell Sherlock." There's a biting pain in his arm and the world starts to blur around him. His head feels heavy, so heavy, and holding it up is far too much effort. He hears her voice as if from a great distance: "Take him back to bed. We have work to do."

* * *

Seven hours later John Watson feels like he's been hit by a bus. His head is pounding, his mouth tastes like something crawled in it and died, and he's got a lovely set of bruises on his arm and side. For a moment he wonders how drunk he was last night—but then his mind catches up with his body and he nearly falls out of bed. She _drugged_ him! And what 'work' were they talking about, exactly? He stands too quickly and the world is spinning for a moment but he forces past it. She's up to something, something dangerous, and he'll be damned if he lets her get away with it.

Sherlock stands in front of the window, his violin propped on his chair and the bow next to it. People scurry back and forth in the street below like so many rats, going to work or school or the shop. So many of them will live out their miserable, tiny lives without ever even glimpsing the stage they occupy: the board of the great game. There are innumerable players, though behind everything—every murder and robbery and blackmail, there's really only one: Moriarty. That's an oversimplification, of course, but Sherlock likes the symmetry. He has one true opponent; the others of are no consequence—or so he thought.

His hands are clasped loosely behind his back and his dressing gown hangs open. Her subtle fragrance hangs about it, cloaks him and clouds his senses. Wearing something that so recently covered her is intimate in ways he has never bothered to imagine. John barges into the room behind him and Sherlock remains impassive. He stares out at the people but he doesn't see them—he sees _her_. She is a mystery, a puzzle when so many people are obvious and boring. She's bested him once and now, now he fears she's used him. But that doesn't make sense, because he _checked_, and—

"Sherlock!" John's voice rings through the flat and he has to stop himself from reminding his friend that his ears work just fine. "It's Irene," John continues, slightly breathless. He's just woken. His reflection in the window is clothed, but his shoes are absent. John wears shoes _constantly_; he'd never start the day properly without them.

"She's gone," Sherlock interrupts and gestures to the table. He's poured over the note so many times, analyzed it for any possible hint of her plans. He can recite it from memory, not that she said much at all.

Two words—I'm sorry—and a kiss. Written on Torchwood stationary with a black gel pen that was borrowed; it ran dry once and spotted the paper twice. Irene is precise in everything she does; she'd never let her pen get into that condition. He found it when he woke this morning, in the pocket of his dressing gown. All of her things are gone as well, including her phone. The only sign of her presence is the lingering scent of her perfume on his dressing gown.

A loud knock on the door startles John. Sherlock is not surprised. He's been expecting this ever since he discovered Irene's absence. He lets the dressing gown fall to the floor and reaches for his suit jacket. "Get your shoes, John," he tells his friend. "We're going on a trip."

* * *

Torchwood is nothing like John thought it would be, on the outside, at least. One Canada Square—Canary Wharf, the home of Torchwood London—is a public fixture. He's passed it hundreds of times without even considering that a top-secret government organization could be housed within the charmingly bland walls. The agent—Sherlock didn't bother to get his name and John is a bit distracted by his head, which _still_ aches—leads them in silence. They get a few curious looks but their guide's clearance level and general demeanor (distinctly not pleased) keep people away.

Sherlock's eyes flick to the walls and John follows his gaze. Each corridor features a colored stripe approximately two-thirds of the way to the ceiling. As they walk John marks the colors—and realizes that he's seen this combination before: on Irene's phone. It wasn't a code that Sherlock was breaking, it was a map and he laid it out for her like a Christmas present.

Their destination is a door twenty-three floors and innumerable corridors from the entrance. The agent knocks on the door lightly, and then opens it and motions for John and Sherlock to step through. He shuts it firmly behind them and the harsh scrape of the lock sliding into place is loud in the silent room. It's cavernous and filled to bursting with strange artifacts. Computer terminals line one wall, and in the center is a table, on which sits some sort of machine. It's nothing like John has ever seen before. Strange designs in neat rows appear next to slots and buttons. A thick cord leads to the wall and a series of lights blink out in a seemingly random pattern. Sherlock gives it a cursory glance, and then turns his attention to the computers. The screens are blank, and when he tries to elicit a response from one nothing happens.

"This was going to save the world." Mycroft materializes from the other end of the room. He swings his brolly idly as he meanders towards them. His face is drawn and his voice is tired. He looks older than John has ever seen him.

Sherlock presses more buttons, but again, nothing happens. "What is it?" he asks, still focused on the terminal in front of him.

"A way to quell riots without the use of gas or rubber bullets." Mycroft runs a hand over the machine's metal casing. "A way to ensure that the correct leader would be elected without having to rely on the capricious whims of the 'unwashed masses.' A way to end suffering and war across the globe. At least, that's what it was." His lips twist in a sneer. "Now it's so much scrap."

John frowns. "How?"

"Mind control." A familiar voice echoes from behind Mycroft and Sherlock flinches so slightly that John would have missed it if he hadn't been looking at the man. Mycroft's shoulders slump as Irene steps out of the shadows. She's wearing the same dark jeans and jumper that she had been when John caught her and Ianto together and her long blonde hair was pulled back from her face in a tight braid. There is something, though, something different about her voice. It's rougher than John is used to hearing, and there's just a bit of South London peeking through the cultured accent she apparently had affected.

Sherlock scoffs. "There's no such thing."

"Didn't you wonder why no one brought up ousting President Tyler?" she drawls. "The economy's in the rubbish bin, inflation is rampant, unemployment is at fifteen percent, and yet Pete Tyler is unassailable." She catches her tongue between her teeth as she regards him. "You're clever, Sherlock, I know you are, too clever to let your prejudices blind you, although—" she casts a meaningful glance back at Mycroft. "Maybe not."

"Yes," Sherlock's brother replies and clears his throat. "It appears I underestimated you, miss Tyler."

"Hold on." John raises a hand. "Who?"

"You didn't think my name was really Irene Adler?" she asks.

Mycroft throws a thick manila file onto the table housing the machine. "Rose Marion Tyler." He bites off the end of each word. "Born to Pete and Jackie Tyler in 1987—in another universe."

John glances back and forth between the two of them. "This is a joke." Mycroft remains impassive and Irene—Rose—raises one eyebrow. "This has to be a joke."

"I'm afraid it's not." Sherlock's gaze is fixed on the wall, but his eyes are dreamy and unfocused and John knows he's not really seeing anything in front of him. "You appeared out of nowhere five years ago with Jackie Tyler, who was presumed dead in the first onslaught of Lumic's Cybermen, and some story about being a long-lost child." He shakes his head, and when he speaks again his voice is low and bitter and mocking. "Oh, you played me for a fool. Well done, miss Tyler. I knew that love was a dangerous disadvantage—thank you for giving me the final proof."

Mycroft places a hand on Sherlock's shoulder. For a moment John thinks his friend will shrug away—but he doesn't. "I sent you into her path. I didn't know. I'm sorry."

"That's not the end of it." They turn back to Irene—Rose, who flips her phone casually, one hand on her hip. "I've got all of Torchwood's secrets on this phone, every single one. Proof of Pete's alliance with New Germany and Czecoslovenia and bits about the Cyberwar that'll leave you with a revolution on your hands, and with that thing down you've got no way to stop it."

A muscle in Mycroft's jaw twitches. "Name your price, Miss Tyler."

"All right." She catches the phone deftly after one final flip and slides it into her pocket. "I want the dimension cannon. The original prototype and all of the files wiped from Tochwood's computer system and every copy but one destroyed."

"No." Mycroft's answer is hard and immediate. "The damage that technology is capable of could rip apart the universe."

She shrugs. "Alright, I tried. You'll want to watch the news for the next few days. I've got it on good authority that it'll be quite a show."

Rose turns to leave, but Sherlock's voice stops her. "Did Moriarty put you up to this?"

She laughs. "Mr. Holmes, do you really think I need a _man_ to make me dangerous? Besides…" The smile fades. "I know madness when I see it. Watch out for him He isn't all there."

"I hate to suggest this," and the dryness of Mycroft's tone belies his words, "but we have ways of making you talk."

"Can you trust them?" she shoots back. "Stretch me out on the rack, cut me open if you like, but you're not getting that code. It will take more than torture to break me, Mr. Holmes. And you can try to break into my phone, if you like. I let Sherlock Holmes have it for six months and he's gotten nowhere, but you're welcome to try. Of course if you input the wrong code one more time it will explode and destroy the memory card."

Mycroft glances to Sherlock, who nods. "All I want," Rose presses on, "is the cannon. All I want, Mr. Holmes, is to go home."


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: Nothing you recognize belongs to me! This was supposed to be the last part, but the chapter is HUGE and I'm not even done (it was sitting at 10428 words and I've got LOADS to go still) so I split it in two. Hopefully there will be another update tonight, and if not then look for the final piece and the epilogue on Wednesday!

* * *

The ride back to 221 b Baker Street is tense. They take Mycroft's car, of course, and Rose sits across from Sherlock. No one speaks as the driver navigates the streets of London, but Sherlock stares at her for the entire ride. There is desperation in the clench of his fists and the way his lips pull into thin lines across his face. John watches Mycroft. He's harder to read than his brother—damn near impossible usually, but John thinks he detects a hint of discomfort from the man. Good. They only reason they took this case in the first place was because Mycroft insisted. Was it worth hurting his brother and endangering national security? The case itself seems to have been a terrific failure.

Mrs. Hudson is waiting for them when they arrive.

"You've got a visitor," she confides in a loud whisper. "I put her in the sitting room, if you boys would just tidy up a bit…" She wrings her hands. "Oh, tea! I'll bring up some biscuits too."

John at least has the presence of mind to thank her. Mycroft twirls his brolly absently as he peruses messages left on his mobile and Sherlock stares at the wall as if it holds the secrets of the universe. Rose watches Mycroft, but John catches the way her eyes dart to Sherlock every few seconds.

Sherlock catches his arm as they climb the stairs to the flat. "Something's not right here," he murmurs with a pointed look in Rose's direction. "She's lying."

"She's _been_ lying," John shoots back under his breath. "Everything about her is a lie; why are you surprised?"

"Why would she say that she doesn't care?" his friend continues, heedless of the interruption. "It doesn't make sense."

Oh. There's a sinking feeling in John's stomach. He really cares for her; Sherlock Holmes, the man without a heart, has fallen in love. Or the closest approximation he has. "She was using you. Sherlock—you can't trust anything she says."

"Yes, thank you John." Sherlock rolls his eyes. "I don't—but I took her pulse and it was elevated, her pupils were dilated, respiration increased and that's _chemistry_ and _chemistry_ doesn't lie. There's something else going on here." He growls, frustration coming off him in waves. "I _hate_ having a mystery at both ends of the case."

Mycroft slides a key into the door and John would be surprised, but the elder Holmes is the power behind the presidency and John has learned not to underestimate his reach. He and Sherlock are last to enter, and when he does he has to pick his jaw up from the floor.

Jackie Tyler, wife of President Peter Tyler, is in their living room. Rose shoots a look at Mycroft, and John is just a bit surprised when he doesn't spontaneously combust. "Don't think this changes anything, Mr. Holmes."

Mycroft remains a strange combination of menacing and bland. "This was not _my_ idea, Miss Tyler. Your mother is—quite persuasive."

"You'd better believe it," Mrs. Tyler snaps. "When my daughter disappears for _five years_ and I find out she's been—_selling herself_ you can bet your arse I'll be bloody persuasive!"

"Hello mum," Rose replies calmly. "How's Tony?"

Jackie glares at her. "He misses his sister."

"You kicked me out, Mum." The edge is back in her voice, just beneath the surface. "Remember?"

"You were spouting all those mad accusations, Rose, what was I supposed to think? I mean, mind control? Really?" Jackie holds out her hands imploringly.

Rose remains unmoved. "Yeah, mum, mind control. Alien mind control—although it didn't start out that way. An' I know because I found it." Her control is slipping—the carefully constructed, posh accent she's used since John found her basically in Sherlock's lap gives way to a well-worn South London drawl.

"Honestly, Rose, I know it's been hard, but your dad—"

"He is _not_ my father," Rose snaps.

"Would you like some tea, Mrs. Tyler?" John asks, to defuse the tension. He is distinctly uncomfortable, caught in the middle of a family drama wrapped in a national crisis.

"Call me Jackie, love," the older woman says. "And that would be lovely." Her gaze rests on Sherlock, finally, who has been uncharacteristically quiet. Her eyes narrow. "Oh, I know you."

"I highly doubt that," Sherlock replies, sarcastic as ever. "I don't have much occasion to meet the President, although I did waste a great deal of time at the People's Palace recently."

"You've got a clever mouth." She strides forward and Sherlock takes a step back, almost unconsciously. She examines him like a slide under a microscope and John can't help the little surge of hilarity that accompanies the slightly panicked look on Sherlock's face. "Pretty," she continues, "and a genius with all the emotional awareness of a dead fish, and a complete git to boot. Oh, I bet she _loves_ you." Sherlock opens his mouth to reply with something undoubtedly witty and condescending, but her palm against his cheek cuts him off and his head snaps to the side. "That's for seducing my daughter you pillock!" Jackie shouts.

"Mum!" Rose pushes her away from Sherlock, who has one hand pressed to his cheek and is working his jaw experimentally. "Stop it!"

"I know he's gone and it's hard but you can't replace him, Rose," Jackie pleads. "You've got to let go of this obsession."

"Oh, like you replaced dad?" Rose snaps back. "Settled down with a man that looks just like him and everything! But he's not, mum, he's not dad and he never will be!"

"Rose Marion Tyler!" Jackie practically shrieks.

John holds up a hand. "Wait, wait just a moment. You think _he_," he points to Sherlock, "seduced her?" He points to Rose.

Jackie folds her arms over her chest. "I don't need to think! I know!"

John tries to hold in the laughter, he really does, but he fails. It's so impossible, so completely _wrong_ and the affronted expression Sherlock has plastered on doesn't help at all. Jackie is glaring daggers at John by the time John manages to stop. "I'm sorry," he says but he's not and then Sherlock is glaring at him too.

"It's true." Rose shifts just enough to redirect her mother's attention. "I seduced him because I needed him to solve a puzzle. Biggest security leak in the PRGB, and it's your golden boy's little brother."

Mycroft is still on his phone, clearly disgusted with the triviality of the drama unfolding around him. Jackie shakes her head slowly; her forehead is wrinkled and the fine lines in the corner of her mouth deepen her frown. "What happened to you, Rose? You were never this cold."

"I grew up." Rose turns to face Mycroft, who snaps his phone shut and slides it into the pocket of his trousers. "Like I said before, Mr. Holmes, this changes nothing. The cannon, or every dirty secret you've ever pushed under the rug will be on tomorrow's news."

"Rose." Jackie lays a hand on her arm and though her daughter tenses she doesn't pull away. "What are you doing?"

When she looks back at her mother there's something like hope, a light that John hasn't seen before and it threatens to blind him with its brilliance. "I'm going home."

* * *

In the end Mycroft agrees and Jackie leaves. There's nothing else that he can do; Rose remains firm in her demands and no amount of shouting from Jackie will dissuade her. Sherlock's brother blusters like a champion but she cuts through his façade with the sweet suggestion that the Republic's citizens should decide who to trust. John isn't sure who taught her how to haggle, but whoever it was, she did him proud.

Sherlock vanishes shortly after Mycroft, leaving John alone with Rose. She sits next to the window, her eyes fixed on the night sky. It isn't much to see, in London; light pollution drowns out most of the stars and Zeppelins block most of the sky from view. John usually avoids looking up. It's much more productive to look down, as Baker Street is notorious for puddles and hidden ice patches in the winter and the last thing he needs is to land on his arse on his walk home from the tube station.

She doesn't speak and the silence between them stretches into something rigid. There are questions he needs to ask her, about her intentions, about Sherlock, about what the hell is going on, but the words stick in his throat. He turns to leave.

"Please don't think poorly of me, Dr. Watson." Her voice effectively shatters the silence. Rose glances back over her shoulder and offers him a small smile. "If there was another way I would have taken it, in a heartbeat."

"Just—was it really mind control?" It isn't the question he _wants_ to ask but he'll work up to what her relationship with his friend is.

"It didn't start out like that." She strokes her phone absently, her eyes still on the few stars strong enough to pierce through London's airspace. "It's a telepathic wave modulator from Entuuri—their equivalent of a cell phone. The Entuu are highly telepathic: it's like sight or smell or taste or touch, for them, just one more sense and when they travel through space the distances involved disrupt their telepathy." She pauses and her hands clench for just a moment. "It's—distressing. Imagine realizing that you're the last human being in the entire universe and you're stranded millions of miles from home. Imagine you wake up one day and you're blind, or deaf. That's what it feels like when their telepathy cuts out."

"Sounds like you've had experience." It's impossible, of course, she's human, after all, and humans aren't telepathic—are they?

"I had a friend," Rose acknowledges. "It happened to him once. It—wasn't pretty. He isn't Entuu, but the principal is the same. The modulator boosts their signal, lets them remain in contact when they're millions of miles from home. A ship crashed just north of Ystradgynlais, Wales and I was called in to consult. I've got—unusual experience and I've encountered Entuu before." Her lips curls and her fingers tighten around the phone. "When Pete found out about the modulator he had me dismissed from the project, but I had a few tricks up my sleeve. I found the Entuu in one of the holding cells; they were terrified, almost out of their minds with panic, and they told me what happened. Pete took the modulator, had Torchwood scientists reprogram it so that it didn't just enhance an already telepathic signal, but broadcast one of its own. The Entuu gave them the specs, they _trusted_ me and I let Pete take away their only connection to their home—to their families. He was going to take something precious and turn it into a weapon."

"You could have gone to the Yard," John suggests.

She laughs. It is not a pleasant sound. "No one would have believed me, and if I told anyone I'd be more likely to be thrown in gaol than he would. He had me disowned, fired, and nearly committed to a mental institution. My own _mother_ turned against me, my friends thought I was barking; the Preachers were the only ones who believed me. They made me an offer: they would help me get the cannon if I disabled the modulator for them."

He blinks. "You made a deal with terrorists?"

Rose scoffs. "What makes a terrorist a terrorist, Dr. Watson? You fought in the Cyberwars; the Preachers were the ones who stopped Lumic. But it was easier for Pete to brand them as rebels and anarchists than to acknowledge the flaws in his system."

John stretches his leg; he'd been in Afghanistan, destroying one of the last of Lumic's factories when he'd nearly died. That was what brought him back to the PRBG, which led to meeting Sherlock, which governs the whole of his life now. And she's right, he has worked with the Preachers before; they knew the cybermen best, knew how they operated and how to break through the nearly impenetrable armor in which the cyborgs encased themselves. They were good, special ops good and ungoverned by any sort of military discipline outside of a loose hierarchy. "So why didn't they just destroy the machine themselves?" he asks and rubs his leg. "Why did they need you, specifically?"

"One," Rose rests her head against the wall. "They didn't have the machine's location. They didn't even know it existed until I told them about it—they just knew that Pete Tyler was toying with the same path Lumic walked down. And two, it's a telepathic machine. Torchwood had it broadcasting a signal that would cause immense pain to anyone who wasn't expressly excluded from the range; it's amazing what you can do with a brain scanner." She grins and taps her forehead. "But I traveled with a telepath for two years; I've got the best shields this side of the galaxy, maybe the universe. No one gets in or out of my head unless I let them."

"Alright, so they needed you," John allows, "but what about Sherlock? If you could just waltz into that bloody room and shut the damn thing off why involve him?"

"We needed the key." She crosses her legs and runs her hands down her thighs, smoothing away the wrinkles in her trousers. "That room has several unique properties, one of which relates to the doors: they're not always in the same place. It took me _months_ to get the map, but it was encoded. I couldn't go to Mycroft for obvious reasons, so it had to be Sherlock."

It's the wrong answer. A fire has been building in his chest since he saw her at Battersea and it roars into life. "Do you have any idea what it's been like?" he demands, voice tight and sharp. "He thought you were _dead_. He _mourned_ you! He pretends to be cold and nearly inhuman but he's not, you know and you broke his heart so you could get a _code solved_. How, in any universe, is that justified?"

"I'm _protecting_ him!" she hisses back, teeth clenched and eyes burning. "D'you think Pete would take kindly to finding out that your friend was a willing participant in the end of his political career? How long d'you think Sherlock would last if Moriarty came after him with a _purpose_ instead of this cat-and-mouse they've got going on? I've seen him, John, I know what he's capable of."

"Sherlock can beat him." John isn't sure exactly where his confidence comes from, but it's there, just as strong as the anger. He's seen Sherlock Holmes do impossible things, what's one more?

"You think so?" she asks, one eyebrow raised.

John rolls his eyes. "Why are you telling me this? Why bother to justify yourself to me? You got what you wanted. Why warn us? Why bother?"

Rose is silent for a long moment. Her eyes stray back to the window and the cloudy London sky. For a moment the mask slips and she looks ageless with half her face in shadow and the light from the streetlamps lending her eyes a strange, golden glow. "When you're in school they tell you about History like it's some immutable fact, like anyone can really know what happened and how and why—but I've been to the past and I've learned that in the end, it's just a story written by the winner. Most of it is lies, justification and national mythology written to bind people together and make them more malleable. But you, you tell stories—_his_ stories. I'd like you to tell mine so that when I'm gone what really happened is remembered, and not the lies Pete will spread. Will you do that for me? Will you tell my story?"

It's a last request, of sorts, and he is honor bound to take it. "Let me get my pen."

She hands him a CD in a thin black case. "It's all here." Her lips quirk. "I've had a lot of time to think about what I want to say."

* * *

Sherlock Holmes does not sleep. He does, most nights—well, _some_ nights—but not tonight. He studies every action, every word, every piece of the puzzle he has collected and he comes to the same conclusion time and time again: she is lying, but why? What does she gain? What are her motivations? It's a riddle he can't solve and it drives him up the wall. Her story checks out—mind control and supposed terrorists and hiding and running and all of that, but he can't understand _why_. There are the usual motivations of course—money (but she doesn't want any), power (but she already has it), love (or conviction) and the last one is the strongest, but it's not love of country because this isn't even her world, and it's not for her family because Mr. Tyler's fall from grace will most certainly impact them negatively. It could be love of justice—she's like John sometimes, firm in her convictions and convinced that 'right' is some sort of incorruptible truth instead of a construction and imposition of society. He runs his hands through his hair and glances at the clock. Too late to try and sleep (not that his restless mind will let him) and too early to rise.

He gets up anyway, and pads into the sitting room. John is there with his laptop out and all the lights off. For a moment Sherlock contemplates turning around but if John is foolish enough to watch pornography in the sitting room he deserves to be embarrassed.

It isn't pornography. It's a video of Irene—Rose. He still has trouble reconciling the names in his head. She's got a sweater he's never seen before on, and her face is bare. He nearly doesn't recognize her without the immaculate make-up and dramatic clothing. Her hair hangs down, blonde and slightly wavy. The image is frozen on the screen and John has a word document open blocking half of her face.

"What's this?" Sherlock asks.

John starts. "_Bloody hell_!" he snaps. "Make some noise, will you?"

Sherlock ignores his outburst. "What are you watching?" He taps the screen.

John frowns. "It's from Rose."

"Yes, I can _see_ that," he replies testily. "Now what is it?"

"Her story." John types something and Sherlock's lips purse.

"She gave it to _you_?"

The barest hint of a smile crosses John's face. "Yep."

Sherlock crosses his arms and glares at the screen. John continues typing. He's never been great at it, although writing the blog has helped. Sherlock could type faster with his eyes closed, but John taps away, slow and steady and methodical. It's enough to drive anyone mad. "Oh, just push play," he snaps.

"Are you sure you want to see this?" The concern in John's voice is real, and Sherlock wonders what is on this tape that put it there.

He shrugs. "What could it possibly tell me that I don't already know?"

* * *

Rose wakes early the next morning. Mycroft is an early riser and she knows he'd like nothing more than to catch her out, to make her feel vulnerable and perhaps get some leverage. She's not about to let that happen. She stares at her face in the mirror; she's older than she was the last time she saw the Doctor, and it shows just a bit at the corners of her lips and her eyes, but there's something more. She feels like she's looking at a stranger, but she's not and the dichotomy makes her fingers shake as she reaches out to touch the glass.

_There'll be this woman, this strange woman walking through the marketplace on some planet a billion miles away from Earth, but she's not Rose Tyler, not anymore. She's not even human_.

She very nearly breaks the mirror. Her hands clench and her jaw tenses and she wants to smash, wants to scream and yell and drown out the hateful words her mother once said. If Jackie knew, oh if she knew the truth she'd turn away from her daughter and never look back. Rose takes a deep breath. Mycroft will call, of course he will. In the meantime—the show must go on.

* * *

He doesn't call. He visits. It's brief and bitter but the elation that's threatening to send her into a dizzy spiral of joy dulls the razor edge of his words. The cannon is small enough to be mistaken for an old laptop and she can hardly believe she's holding it in her hands. The plans are on a flash drive, safely tucked in her pocket, and when Mycroft bids her a sardonic farewell she waves him off without a thought. It's surreal, this feeling, the knowledge that the end is in sight. She's been fighting for so long, searching for so long that she almost doesn't know what to do with herself. Hope unfurls within her and she feels too large for her skin, like her joy will burst out through her fingertips and the ends of her hair and refract through the air around her.

* * *

Sherlock finds her curled up on the window seat. There's a heavy sort of feeling to the air, now that he knows what is coming—now that he knows what has been. If he hadn't seen her with his own eyes, if he hadn't been to Torchwood and seen the machine itself he never would have believed her. Mind control? Aliens? Parallel universes? It sounds like a science fiction novel made reality, but it's more than that. It's an epic, a tragedy, and though he will not bother to learn about such things he is quite able to appreciate them. He has found what moves her, what has always moved her. He should be satisfied, should disdain her for allowing her emotions to rule her—love after all, is a vicious motivator—but he cannot. She has bested him, after all, and she used love to do so.

"Did you ever figure it out?" she asks. The phone is heavy in her hand and her fingers wrap around it like it's something precious. Her thumb hovers over the screen as she looks up through her eyelashes at him. 'I A LOCKED,' the phone says, as it has since she left it with them.

Sherlock frowns. "No."

Irene—Rose—shrugs. "That's all right. I didn't expect you would. There's a story, you see, and you came in rather close to the end. Her thumb flicks down four times and she holds the phone up so he can see.

'I AM T I M E LOCKED' it reads. He sniffs. It's gibberish to him, and for the first time in his life, now that he knows everything he finds himself more confused than when he began. She is a study in contradictions: hard and yielding, glass and steel, and the mystery of her has driven him near madness (that's what love is, biochemistry and madness). In her presence, unmasked, he cannot help but feel small; like he has been caught on the edge of some great epic and pulled into its midst.

It is a strange and unfamiliar feeling. Always before _he_ was center of gravity and others orbited around him—John, Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade, they each had a life, of course, but for better or for worse it centered on _him_. Being relegated to that position was distressing and overwhelming—and liberating.

"You've accomplished your mission," he says finally, to break the silence and rolls his skull between his hands to give them something to do. She's watching him with whiskey-dark eyes and those red, red lips and he's never been a man to give into baser urges; he considers them beneath him, knows that they cannot compare with the pure aesthetic stimulation of the intellect—but she tempts him, oh she does. "What will you do now?"

A grin splits her face, the first that he's seen. It's nearly blinding with the sheer force of her joy. White teeth sparkle at him and her tongue touches the corner of her lips mischievously. "I'm going to Canary Wharf, Mr. Holmes. I need to see a man about a time machine." She stands with practiced, fluid grace and he can read the combat training in her now, knows that it's not for show. "Coming?"

Should he? He's scolded John so many times about giving in to romantic impulses, about embellishing his accounts of Sherlock's genius and lingering over unimportant details instead of sticking to the facts. He should say no, should dismiss her from his mind and move onto the next case (there is always a next case)—but he doesn't. He would like to see this story ended, would like to learn what role he has played in a tale with all the markings of a tragedy.

"Yes," he says. "Just let me ring John. I'm lost without my blogger, you know."

He has a feeling that she does.

* * *

The trip back to Torchwood is uneventful. John keeps looking at Sherlock like he expects the other man to suddenly burst into some strong emotion, but Sherlock remains maddeningly calm. A suppressed excitement thrums in the air, though, and just beneath the surface. Rose stares out one window and Sherlock stares out the other, trapped in their own thoughts, and John sits between them feeling a little like a gooseberry and a lot out of his depth. The cab lets them off just outside One Canada Square and Rose takes the lead.

"Let me do the talking," she instructs the men. "I've got an in, after all, and we'll only get one chance to do this."

"Yes ma'am," John replies. Sherlock merely nods.

"Right." Rose takes a deep breath and straightens her shoulders.

* * *

Jackie is waiting for them at the front desk. Rose tenses for a fight—but there isn't one. Jackie looks at her for a long time with a sad, wistful expression on her face. It's the same way she looked when she helped Rose get back to the Doctor the first time, and when she watched her daughter leave with him on Christmas night.

"I forget sometimes that you're all grown up," the older woman says finally. "You'll always be my little girl, Rose, and I forget that you're a woman too. Of course you have to go—it's the Doctor. An' if your dad was here he'd tell you the same thing." She blinks and Rose can see that her eyes are full. "Just don't forget me, or Tony, or even Pete. I know he's not your dad, but he tries. He does."

It isn't what she expected, but it's exactly what she needs. Rose hugs her mother fiercely. "You'll always be my mum," she replies. "Even when I'm in another universe. Nothing will ever, ever change that. I love you an' Tony, and I wish things could have been better with Pete." They cling to each other and John elbows Sherlock until he looks away. When they finally separate Jackie busies herself wiping her eyes and Rose gives her a watery smile.

"Oh, look at that," the older woman clucks. "You've made me all weepy and now my makeup's run."

"You look lovely, Mum," Rose insists and rolls her eyes.

"Is everything alright, Mrs. Tyler?' the young woman behind the desk inquires.

Jackie waves her concern away. "Yes, Rachel, everything's fine. We're going up to the lever room."

Rachel eyes the visitors. "Ma'am, I don't believe they have clearance—"

"My husband _runs_ this organization Rachel!" Jackie barks. "And I'll take my daughter and her friends where I damn well please!"

"Yes Mrs. Tyler," Rachel replies, sufficiently cowed. Rose hides a smile behind her hand and John's eyes twinkle merrily. Sherlock watches with interest, but says nothing.

* * *

The lever room is silent. Thick sheets of plastic cover what little furniture hugs the walls. Everything is white—the ceiling, the floor, the chairs, the walls, even the drapes that cover the windows. Every sound echoes, even the near-silence of their breathing. It is sterile and empty and cold—like a tomb. Rose shivers and clutches the bag with the cannon more tightly to her. Toward the near end of the room two levers swathed in plastic stand perpendicular to the floor.

_Wind and screaming and the pull of the Void. Her hand is slipping—gone. Fingers claw at empty air and his eye bore into her, black and wide, rimmed with white as he screams for her. She is falling, falling, falling and she will never ever stop_.

She stares at the levers, back straight, arms wrapped rigidly around herself, until Jackie lays a hand on her arm.

"Rose?" her mother asks softly.

"It's nothing. Just a memory." Rose takes a deep breath and lays the cannon on the floor next to the wall. She presses a series of buttons and a low hum fades into existence. After a quick check she rises from her crouch and steps back.

John looks from Rose to the cannon, and then back again. "Now what?"

Rose leans up against the wall. "Now we wait."

* * *

River Song sashays into the TARDIS with her usual combination of seduction and arrogance, but there's something off, a hardness he hasn't seen before (but once) and a twist of the lips that tells him it's going to be a bad day. He knows within ten seconds of meeting her what sort of day it will be, where they are in this strange morass people call a relationship. There are good days, when he can almost forget the ache in his chest, when he can get over the way her hand feels wrong when he takes it and the way her blatant sexuality grates on him. There are days when she's brilliant and he's almost happy, when they are very nearly just two people and not the Doctor and River Song, when the paradox hanging over their heads is a distant irritation.

Then there are days like today, when the rage bubbles in the back of his throat, helpless rage at their situation, at the universe, at the stupid, _stupid_ humans who ripped something bright and shining from him and replaced it with a woman he doesn't trust but must, who keeps secrets and who in turn has secrets kept from her, who he will never fully know just as she cannot fully know him. There are days when he screams at her and she screams right back, when all of the myriad ways he has failed her come back to haunt him and he remembers that far from saving everyone, this go 'round he seems incapable of saving anyone.

"You're late," she informs him.

"Oh, hello Doctor, thanks for the lift," he shoots back. "Terribly sorry for the short notice, did I inconvenience you?"

"Alright you two," Amy says with a glare very nearly worth of Jackie Tyler. "Do I have to come down there and separate you?"

And then the TARDIS stops, just stops like someone's thrown the parking break but inertia carries Amy forward and she slams into the glass floor. Oh, she will have bruises tomorrow, she can feel it. The lights flicker and go out and the only illumination in the room is the dim light of the Time Rotor.

"Oh," she groans. "Ouch."

"Amy!" the Doctor shouts from somewhere beyond the console. She knows it's bad when even _he_ can't keep upright.

"I'm here!" she yells back and drags herself onto her knees. The Doctor dances around the console, River at his side.

"We're dead in the water," the older woman says grimly.

The Doctor's eyes narrow. "That's impossible! We're in the Vortex! We can't be _stopped_. You don't just _stop_ in the bloody _Time Vortex_!"

River slides the monitor over and gestures sharply at it. "Yes, Sweetie, I know, but that doesn't change the fact that we are completely and totally _still_. Ergo, dead in the water. It's an old Earth adage and I know you're familiar with it."

Something flickers off in the corner of Amy's vision. She blinks. She doesn't remember hitting her head, but she must have, because there are three people in the console room—so why are there four? A woman is standing at the foot of the stairs. She's a bit older than Amy, maybe early thirties, and there's something familiar about her, an itch in the back of Amy's skull. Her hair is long and blonde and straight and it hangs down well past her shoulders. She's got huge, dark brown eyes and elegantly sculpted brows. A corner of her mouth tugs up into a half-smile and something in Amy's mind clicks into place. It's not just _a_ woman—it's _the_ woman, the one the Doctor watches when the universe is cruel and he thinks that she's gone to sleep. She's older than she was in the videos, and there's something hard about her and she's got a _gun_ in a holster strapped to her thigh—but Amy would recognize her anywhere.

"Doctor!" she calls and takes a halting step back towards him.

"Not _now_ Amelia!" he snaps and then goes back to arguing with River. He's slipped into Gallifreyan without even noticing, or he's swearing up a storm because the TARDIS isn't translating.

"Doctor, you really want to see this," Amy presses.

"I said not now!" His voice is hard and sharp and if she didn't know better she'd be hurt. But she does know better and she's never let him push her around before so she'll be damned if he starts now. She opens her mouth to try again, but the woman cuts her off.

"_Doctor_." Her voice is strange, almost choral, and soft enough that Amy thinks he hasn't heard, not at first. River does, though, and stares over his shoulder. She's gone pale and still and that finally gets through to the mad Time Lord who is _still_ denying that what has just happened is possible.

He turns, slowly, as if he's afraid of what he will see. The woman smiles at him, slowly at first, but it breaks over her face like a sunrise, illuminates her like dawn. The Doctor stops breathing. Amy would be worried, but he's boasted long and often of superior Time Lord physiology so she's merely—concerned.

"What are you," he asks, his voice soft. If she didn't know better Amy would think that he was fine, that this was all routine, but he's her best friend; she's traveled with him for around a year (time is—complicated—in the TARDIS) and she can read him like an open book—so she notices the way his shoulders twitch and the icy stillness he projects. He's on the verge of breaking.

"I'm a hologram," the girl says. "Literally, anyway." Her smile fades, just a bit. "I'd hoped to get a you that knows me. Explaining is—difficult—and we're on a bit of a schedule."

"Oh," he says, and his voice is low and dark and the Doctor has stepped out—there's someone else standing where her best friend was. "I know who you look like—but Rose Tyler is _gone. _Gone and _never_ _ever_ coming back, so I suggest you drop this ridiculous pretense and tell me what you really are."

Something in her eyes changes. "Sure you wanna have that conversation here, Doctor?" she asks and there's an edge of bitterness in her voice that bites. "S'a bit private, after all, and you've got company." South London blurs the edges of her words, makes them thick and heavy in the near-silent TARDIS. It sounds more natural than the posh accent she had been using, like it belongs on her.

"You say you're Rose Tyler." He leans forward until their noses are almost touching. "Prove it."

"All right then." She glares right back at him. "Shall I begin with the first word you said to me? No, that's too simple and besides, you used that when you were regenerating. It was 'run,' by the way," she says—apparently for Amy and River's benefit. "But moving on—what about 'I could save the world but lose you?' or perhaps 'I'm so glad I met you,' or what about the very first place you took me—to the end of the world, Doctor, to watch the Sun swallow the Earth in its death-throes. What about that time you had a gun to my head, or when you took me back to meet my father just because I asked? What about satellite five and 'is a slave a slave if he doesn't know it?' What about that time I _burned_ for you, to save you, because I would happily die if I knew you would live? Or is that too mundane for you, too far in the past?"

His eyes are wide and Amy wonders if he notices that he's leaning back, trying to get away without actually moving. Rose crowds his space, takes a step forward and even though she's insubstantial Amy can _feel_ her presence.

"Want to go a little more recent?" she continues, words clipped and precise like a scalpel. "Shall I tell them about our trip to Scotland—about Queen Victoria and the werewolf and the bet that cost _so_ much more than ten quid? Shall I mention Queen Elizabeth's coronation and the Wire and 'no power on Earth can stop me?' What about the 2012 Olympics? What about Chloe Webber and the Isolus and 'what you really need is a hand to hold?'" Rose takes a shuddering breath and a muscle in her jaw twitches. "Or maybe I should tell them about the impossible planet and the beast in the pit; about a group of brilliant people and a voice in the dark. You told me it lied, Doctor." He flinches. She presses on like an avalanche. "You were wrong. Maybe that's the story I should tell—the last story I have left, about a man and a woman and whole universe in between them; about a beach and a choice and an unfinished sentence."

River is staring. Amy doesn't know who she is, or what place she holds in the Doctor's life (although Amy can hazard a guess)—but there's a look like devastation on her face, like resignation and pity and heartbreak rolled into one as she watches the Doctor and Rose. What does it feel like to watch the man you love with the woman that _he_ loves?

"Oh, for the love of god!" another voice chimes in. "Will the two of you just kiss and make up already?" A petite woman with bleached-blonde hair steps into view and the Doctor blinks.

"Jackie?" he asks once he manages to stop gaping like a demented fish. "_Jackie Tyler_? Why am I hallucinating _you_? As I recall you got the best of the bargain: your husband and your daughter all in a neat little package." There's a bitter edge to his voice that cuts like glass.

"You're lucky this is just a hollowhatsit," Jackie grumbles. "You're looking for a slap, you are!"

"Doctor," River calls. He ignores her. "Doctor!"

"Yes, what is it _now_ Dr. Song?" he demands waspishly.

She shoves the monitor towards him. "You'll want to take a look at this."

"I'm in the middle of a crisis, River," the Doctor says so reasonably that he _has_ to be faking it. "And Amelia seems to be caught in it as well. Can whatever chaos you've managed to drum up wait until I've figured out _why_ I am hallucinating about Tyler women?"

River glares at him. "No, it really can't, sweetie." She gestures impatiently to the monitor and, grudgingly, the Doctor turns away from the troubling hologram.

"Oh no," he breathes and his eyes widen as he studies the screen. He seizes it with both hands and pours over the strange symbols swirling across it. "Oh, this is _extremely_ very not good."

"Doctor?" He ignores Amy in favor of muttering viciously at the screen and futilely pressing buttons and flipping switches. "Doctor! What's wrong?"

"She's locked me out of the controls!" he snaps back and whirls around. Rose is watching him with a particularly lupine smile. For a moment Amy feels a bit like little red riding hood staring down the wolf—oh, what big teeth you have. "You cheated!" the Doctor accuses and brandishes a finger at Rose.

"I may have forgotten to mention that the cannon automatically locks onto the TARDIS and feeds her our current coordinates," Rose allows.

He crosses his arms over his chest. "You _lied_. Look at you, Rose Tyler, all grown-up."

She shakes her head. "Nothing I've told you is untrue."

"Ah! But a lie of omission is still a lie." The Doctor is almost gleeful at catching her out.

She regards him evenly, and her tone is carefully neutral but the words still cut like broken glass. "Yes, well—you'd know all about that."

"I hate to disrupt this _lovely_ domestic," River interjects, "but sweetie, you'll want to find something to hold on to!" The TARDIS shakes and somewhere deep inside the living ship a bell rings, loud and long. "We're going to crash!"


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: Nothing you recognize belongs to me! Here's the final chapter-the epilogue should be out either tonight or tomorrow night! Enjoy!

* * *

The image flickers and then vanishes and they are left staring at the smooth white wall of the lever room. Rose studies the cannon, still humming and vibrating faintly. Jackie remains with her arms crossed over her chest, glaring at the wall like she might burn a hole in it. John steals a glance at Sherlock who remains unimpressed.

"Is that it?" he asks with bored indifference. "I expected something a little more—dramatic."

The plastic covering the sparse furniture in the room flutters. A wind from nowhere tugs John's jacket and tousles Rose's hair. There's an electric sort of tension that crackles into being and a wheezing groan echoes through the room. It happens gradually, but soon there's a blue box sitting in front of the wall with 'Police Public Call Box' printed above the door and a light flickering on top.

Jackie sighs and rolls her eyes. "Always loves to make an entrance, that one," she mutters.

Sherlock is staring at the box. Admittedly it isn't what John thought of when Rose said 'space and time ship' but it did just materialize in front of them. He opens his mouth and closes it several times and John can't help but smile. Sherlock Holmes, speechless. There's a sight he never thought to see.

Rose steps forward and lays a hand on the bright blue door. "Doctor?" she calls. There is no response. "Doctor, it's me." Still nothing. "Doctor!" The wind dies down and the groaning subsides, and the room is silent but for the sound of her ragged breathing. She lets her hand fall, stands in front of the door with her feet planted and her hands curled into fists. "Are you going to hide in there like the coward you are," she bites off, "or are you going to face me? I've earned that much, haven't I?"

* * *

Inside the TARDIS the only light is the ghostly glow of the Time Rotor. Amy hangs half-off the railing and groans. River has managed to stay mostly upright thanks to the console, although she'll have a bruise in the shape of several levers and a switch on her side come morning. The Doctor stands with his back to the door. The TARDIS is a space and time ship, and when She wishes She is damn near impervious but that door is still wood, and every word from the outside drifts through, loud and clear.

The Doctor's face remains impassive, but his knuckles are white where he grips the console. Amy staggers to her feet. "Are you going to answer her?" she demands. "Doctor!"

The Doctor does not reply. He flips a switch and presses seven buttons: the first part of the dematerialization sequence. River can name every switch, every lever and button on the TARDIS console. She can land the ship silently while her mum has a cup of tea and never spill a drop. She can fire a blaster five times whilst spinning and hit every target, every time. She can send a message via psychic paper and read and write in Old High Gallifreyan. She can speak it too, the lost language of the Time Lords. She can fix the TARDIS as much as anyone can, and she can tell within ten minutes if they're going to get arrested on one of the Doctor's adventures, but there is one thing she cannot do, one thing she will never, ever do.

She will never get to keep him.

Their story, the story of the Doctor and River Song, has been a tragedy from its beginning (both of them). She's hated him for decades and has loved him for longer, but it's twisted up inside her: love and hate and fear and rage and desire and obsession and affection and joy and pain until she can't tell which way is up. They are binary stars, caught in each other's gravity but it ends in destruction, it always does (she's seen him die twice, after all, and once she pulled the trigger). When it's good it's _amazing_; it's picnics on Arcadia beneath the blossoming _Wethleshen_ trees, it's the sparkle in his eye she glimpses on rare occasions when everyone lives, it's wonder and glory and running, it's passion and fire and the press of his narrow hips against hers, the weight of his gangly body over her and the slight coolness of his lips against her skin.

When it's good between the two of them she's an addict waiting for the crash, because when it's bad it's awful; it's nightmares of being back on the street again still looking desperately for her parents, it's memories of the orphanage that sink around her like tar, it's the helplessness of being trapped inside the spacesuit, it's the knowledge that everything has been decided for her because it has already happened for him, it's waking to an empty bed and finding him perched on the console room stairs watching with rapt eyes a woman he will never even name, it's fighting and pain and wounds that cannot heal because _they are never on even ground_. It's early days for him, but she's been around for long enough to know the patterns of their relationship, long enough for the bitterness to set in, long enough to resent the giant causal loop that hangs over their heads—long enough to know that however happy they are (and those moments are blinding and ecstatic) there is a shadow over everything.

All of her life as Melody Pond and as River Song has been built around him. She was taken as a child to be used as a weapon against him. Everything that she has, is, and will be has been determined. She is trapped in this cage of a life with a man she could not choose to love, and she remembers Martha Jones. She has met so many of the Doctor's companions: brave Sarah Jane, still lovely in her fifties and her clever adopted son Luke, Captain Jack Harkness with his charm and devilishly good looks and surprisingly clear understanding of how complex time travel makes relationships, Tegan who left him when traveling became too much for her, and even Susan once, though River couldn't say anything to the girl without risking a paradox. And then she'd met Martha Jones, the woman who walked the Earth for an entire year by herself, risking her life a thousand times over to carry the story of a man who saved the universe to every corner of the world.

They'd met years ago, largely by accident, and discovered they had a time traveling alien in common. Since then she stops by whenever she's in the neighborhood and she's found something of a friend in the quiet, determined, clever woman. River asked once, why Martha had left the Doctor. It was obvious that she had feelings for him, even if the Doctor didn't return them; how could she bring herself to go? And Martha had taken her hand and smiled at her, the fine lines around the younger/older woman's eyes crinkling. "I left," Martha said, "because I knew that I could be brilliant all by myself, because I didn't need to stay with the Doctor to be worth something, and because I deserve someone who can love me completely and totally as I am. And so do you."

The Doctor pulls a lever. One more button and the materialization sequence will begin. The longer they stay in this strange parallel universe the more fragile River's timeline becomes. She can feel it, the strange sort of euphoria of her past slowly untangling. One choice and she could be free—it's a paradox, but so is their location and there have been no reapers. She has a sneaking suspicion that even if she does choose none will show. There's something at work here, something more powerful than she's ever encountered before. She can feel that too, a hum in the back of her mind and a song like the universe on the dawn of the very first day.

So she chooses. River covers his hand with hers before he can move to press that final button. The Doctor frowns. "Go to her," she says before he can open that gob of his. "If you don't Doctor, you'll regret it for the rest of your long, long life." She gives him a humorless smile. "And I'd know."

"I can't," he grinds out like it pains him and tries to shrug her hand off. River doesn't let him. "It's already happened, River, and no matter what I want to do _I cannot open that door_."

"Then I'll let her in," River counters.

"You can't!" He's glaring at her with all the force of the Oncoming Storm but she's weathered these fights before and his tempestuous moods no longer faze her. "You will rip time apart, do you know that? The entire Vortex, destroyed, maybe even the universe! Could you do that, River Song? Could you really kill _every living thing_? And for what?"

"For you, sweetie," she replies and he opens his mouth to interrupt her but she will not let him. "And for me. I'm not sure who I'll be without you—but I'd like to find out."

"Why are you doing this?" he asks, and the rage is gone from his voice. The Doctor looks at her like he's never seen her before, like she's a puzzle and he will never figure her out. Well, now he won't.

"Because it always comes down to a choice, my love, and we never had one." She removes her hand from his and gives him a shove. It catches him off balance and he reels away from the console. "Now go to her, before it's too late." She catches Amy watching from the sidelines and raises an eyebrow. "You too, Amelia."

"I have talked to women before, River," the Doctor insists, affronted.

"Amy's going to keep her from slapping you, Doctor," River replies dryly. "Given the length of time between when we landed and when you're going out you might need it."

He sniffs. "Come along, Pond. You can tell everyone back home you've been to a parallel universe."

Amy laughs. "Yeah, and then I could get sectioned!"

"I had a medical student say the same thing to me once," he tells her smugly, but she follows him anyway. She hasn't learned that he's just a man, not yet. She looks at him and River can see the stars in her eyes, the blind faith that will get her killed if she isn't careful.

When the TARDIS door closes behind them River turns away. The vague euphoria has progressed into dizziness and a subtle nausea. The console room wavers around her and she notices with a bit of mild panic that the Time Rotor has gone see through. Not long now. Soon she will exist as something else and she won't remember any of this. The hum in her mind is almost a roar and she can feel the song echoing through her like a tuning fork. Golden light cascades over her shoulders and she smiles, a small, tired curve of lips.

"I thought it might be you," Rivers says and turns. Rose Tyler stands in front of River, but it's not Rose Tyler. She is younger than the woman waiting outside the TARDIS, and golden fire shines through her eyes. "You're a goddess on seventeen planets, you know, and a legend on twenty-three more. The girl who was a wolf, the girl who swallowed time."

"_What do you wish, River Song_?" It's a strange voice, ethereal and stripped of the accent that colored the girl's words before.

River steps forward. There are tears pouring down not-Rose's face, golden bits of fire that sparkle in the shadows of the TARDIS. She's always crying, in every depiction that River has ever seen. "I want a choice," River says. "I want to be my own person. I want a life that's _mine_. And I want him to be happy—I want him to be free."

Not-Rose smiles. She holds out her hand and River takes it. Golden light flickers beneath her skin and River watches with mild interest as the light dances from Not-Rose to River's own flesh. "_Goodbye, River Song._"

* * *

The TARDIS door shuts and the world turns on its axis. The Doctor staggers as reality abruptly shifts ninety degrees and the universe as he knew it dissolves around him. Memories crowd into his head, events that never happened, people he never met, and some he did that fade away like mist on a warm summer day. The people around him waver and twist like a mirage in the desert and he grasps desperately for something solid, something real.

_Donna turns to face him, her hands planted on her hips and one eyebrow raised. _Now_ he's in for it. "So spaceman, why are we at _The Library_? I thought it was next stop beach, you know—sand and surf and cabana boys?" _

_ He dodges the question. "Do we need a reason?"_

_ She isn't buying. "Yeah, you do." _

_ "Fine." He pulls out the psychic paper. "I got a message." It's blank, but for a single line of what appear to be intricately drawn circles._

_ Donna frowns. "What's that then?"_

_ He flips the wallet closed. "Coordinates, and a message."_

_ "So what's it say?" She's exasperated now and her slap is very nearly weapons grade, so he answers._

_ "It says 'hello, Dad.'" _

_He grips Donna's shoulders and her eyes are wide but he doesn't have time to be gentle, not if what he thinks is happening is actually happening. "When you saw Jenny in that parallel world—did she say anything else? Anything at all?"_

_ Something over his shoulder catches Donna's eye and the hint of a smile blooms on her face. "Why don't you ask her yourself?" _

_ He releases his friend, staggers back like he's been shot. It can't be, but he knows that it is. His daughter is alive, and she's here. He can feel her in his head—the emptiness recedes just a bit and if they had more time he would savor this moment, burn it into his memory. Maybe this time she'll stay. Maybe now they're meeting in the right order._

_ They're not, and she doesn't. _

"_So what's a home box?" Amy peers at the small black box the Doctor has fixated on. _

_ "Like a black box for aircraft, but this does one better." He taps the glass. "It records, and then it 'homes.' It brings all the data back." _

_ His ginger companion rolls her eyes. "What's so impressive about that? And what are we doing in a museum?" She perks up. "Is this how you keep score?" _

_ He scoffs. "Amelia!"_

_ "What?" she protests. "What's so interesting about a 'home box,' then?"_

_ "Do you see those markings?" He points to the strange squiggles that cover one side of the box. "That's Old High Gallifreyan, the lost language of the Time Lords. There was a time, Amelia, when those words could topple governments or raise up whole cities from the depths—when they could burn stars and change the very course of time itself."_

_ She's intrigued now, he can see it in her eyes. She's young and eager and easy to impress and it's such a familiar look. The pain is sharp still, so many years after losing Rose and it still hurts like it did that very first day, albeit not so frequently. But enough of the past—he's got a troublesome daughter to find. "It says 'hello, Dad.'" _

_The soldiers are dead, but the Angels are gone, and he supposes that is something. There is always a price and in the grand scheme of things five lives for the universe is chump change. It doesn't feel like that, though. It feels like a failure and this beach isn't helping. Jenny is talking with Amy and if he squints he can almost see Rose, standing with her arms wrapped tight around her chest, holding herself together by sheer force of will. _

_ He turns away, back toward the planet that won't remind him of Norway, not at all. _

_ "You did good." She's damn quiet, his daughter, and he jumps when she speaks._

_ "Not so bad yourself," he allows. They stand in silence for a moment, watching the Clerics prepare to leave. Their job is done, after all. "Come with me," he says finally. He always does, every time they meet. Someday it will be the right time, but he knows it isn't even before she turns him down._

_ "I can't," Jenny says and he doesn't imagine the regret, he can't have imagined the regret in her voice. "Not when I already have."_

_ "When?" It's a bit desperate, asking, but he can't help himself. She's the only one besides him, the only Time Lord and when she's around the emptiness is quiet._

_ "Soon," she tells him, and smiles. "Very soon." _

_ He hopes she's right. _

And then as suddenly as the feeling came it vanishes, leaving him standing with the TARDIS, warm and concerned, at his back and Amelia at his side and Rose Tyler standing in front of him.

"What did you do?" he demands.

She rocks back on her heels, eyes shuttered, face set in lines he's having trouble reading. "No, 'hello Rose, nice to see you?'" she asks mildly, too mildly. "No 'well I guess it wasn't impossible after all?' No 'sorry I left you in this godforsaken universe and couldn't even finish a bloody _sentence_?'"

He winces. "Right. Yes." His eyes dart around the room, mapping out escape exits and the best routes around the other occupants. It pays to be prepared, especially when Jackie Tyler is in the room—especially when she's giving him the glare that hints at a slap in his near future. "How did you manage it, then? Because I tried, Rose. I tried for _weeks_ and the only thing I found was a gap large enough to get a signal through."

She gestures to the black box next to her. "We built the cannon. It was originally designed to catapult me through the parallels until I reached our original universe, but it was shut down."

The Doctor goes rigid. "You did _what_?" he snaps. "Do you have any idea how _dangerous_ that is? You could have pulled the multiverse apart! You could have destroyed the universe, all universes!"

"I know that!" she yells right back. "I know all of that, Doctor, and I worked night and day to make sure it wouldn't happen. I checked every equation, every chip, every _inch_ of that machine. And if Pete Tyler hadn't decided that mind control was more important I would have been through the Void _years_ ago."

A muscle in his jaw twitches and his hands curl up into loose fists. "I told you it was impossible, Rose, and it was—not because I _couldn't_ do it, but because I _shouldn't_. Because I couldn't risk endangering the lives of all of creation for one person. If I really wanted to I could have ripped through the Void like tissue paper _but it wasn't worth it_. I thought you _knew_ that. I thought you understood that the universe _has_ to come first." He shakes his head slowly.

"Don't you _dare_," she growls at him. "Don't you dare tell me what I did was wrong. I have worked for _ten years_ to find a way back that wouldn't end in destruction. _Ten years_ and I succeed and _this_ is what you say to me?" Her jaw sets and her hands are balled into tight fists and she walks forward until she has him backed against the door to the TARDIS. "You have _no idea_ what I went through!"

He crosses his arms over his chest. "Enlighten me."

Rose studies him for a moment. He's a different man but she still knows which buttons to press, still knows how to shock him. "I died two days ago." It hangs in the air for a moment, terrible and incomprehensible. "That sniper your friend Moriarty sent was good," she tosses over her shoulder, back to Sherlock. "He found my safe-house, took down Lois between one breath and the next. I didn't even have time to blink, but then I got better. I woke up hours later with a raging headache, covered in blood and lying on top of my friend's body. And now my teeth feel wrong and my scars are gone and I've got so many thoughts it feels like my head is going to explode—and there's this silence, Doctor, an emptiness I never even noticed before but it's so _loud_ now; it breathes and gasps and roars around me."

"That's impossible," the Doctor declares flatly. His face is set, still, but much paler than it was. He might be angry (furious, really) and suspicious, but the thought of her dying when she's so close makes him feel ill.

"Why?" Amy, irrepressible as always, wants to know.

"Time Lords have a way of cheating death," Rose replies. "It's called regeneration: every cell in his body changes; he's practically a new man."

"Except I'm not. The packaging changes, my quirks and dashing good looks—but the core of me, what makes me _me_, remains. Regeneration can't change that." He glares at Rose and leans in, his hands falling to hang at his sides. "But that's _impossible_ because only _Time Lords_ regenerate. You're human, Rose, and humans don't regenerate."

"Oh, you think?" she snaps. "You don't _listen_, you bloody stubborn alien!" Her hands shoot out and she seizes the Doctor's wrists.

"Oi!" he shouts and tries to pull away. She holds fast.

"You're going to listen, Doctor," she tells him. There's something in her voice, something that sends shivers down Amy's spine. Rose places the Doctor's hands on either side of her face. She guides his fingers to her temples and closes her eyes. "Now _listen_."

"Rose," he begins, "you can't…" But as her eyes close so do his, and his voice trails off, mouth hanging open slightly as his eyes flicker back and forth beneath their lids.

"Doctor?" Amy tugs at his arm but it's rigid, locked in in place and for all that he looks like a twig he's stronger than she is.

"Just leave him, love," Jackie suggests with a bit of a smile. "When himself is after sommat there's no distracting him."

* * *

They remain standing, silent, for several minutes. Sherlock checks his watch three times and John elbows him in the ribs. Jackie rolls her eyes at the pair of them and casts a worried look at her daughter.

"So, you knew him?" Amy asks, mostly to break the tension that is building like static electricity around them.

Jackie snorts. "Could say that. He abducted my daughter, brought her home a year late with not so much as a by-your-leave. Didn't matter to Rose, though, she was off with him just as soon as they finished blowing up Ten Downing Street." Her frown softens as her eyes linger on the two of them. "He sent her home too, when things got bad—but she was never one to sit around when someone was in trouble, not my Rose. I helped her get back to him and what thanks do I get? She showed up months later, _months_, an' I thought she'd died, but she came back with himself over there except he didn't look like he did, an' he didn't look like he does now. Said he 'regenerated' and he was sick." She sighs and shakes her head. "Bloody alien for a son-in-law, no one tells you that can happen."

A gasp from the other side of the room pulls their attention away before Amy can answer. The Doctor's eyes are open and his face is frozen in an expression of terrified hope. His hands fall from Rose's temples but one lingers at her throat. He presses two fingers into the soft skin of her neck and her lips quirk into a crooked grin.

"That's impossible," he breathes.

Rose cocks an eyebrow at him. "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

He throws back his head and laughs. It's a sound that Amy hasn't heard often; he's so close with everything: his emotions, his plans, his past, that sometimes she feels like she hardly knows him. But now his joy shines through like a supernova and Rose is laughing to, and a smile like sunrise splits her face. He sweeps her up in a hug that lifts her feet off the ground and she clings to him and buries her face in his shoulder. There's a light in his eyes that Amy hasn't seen before, like planets pulling themselves together out of rubble and space dust and stars being born.

* * *

The goodbyes are short. Rose and Jackie have already said most of what needs saying. She hugs her daughter and Rose returns the embrace with equal intensity. "You keep him in line," Jackie instructs, "an' don't let his head get too big."

"I will, mum." Rose wipes her eyes and takes a shuddering breath. "You too. Be safe—Tell Tony I love him." Jackie nods. Rose shakes hands with John. She's still smiling. "It's been interesting, John."

"Good luck," he tells her. It's inadequate, but the only thing he can offer. He's heard her story and he's going to tell it and he hopes that it has a happy ending. He likes to think that it does.

Sherlock is last. "Miss Tyler," he says formally.

"Mr. Holmes," she replies, matching him for mood and tone. There's a strange look on his face as he regards her for a moment, like he's trying to burn her into his memory. She places her hands on his shoulders, stands on tip-toe, and presses her lips to his cheek. "Thank you," she murmurs, and then the door slams open.

There was a time when the Doctor was happy to see Pete Tyler, even the strange half-familiar man from this half-familiar universe, because he could do what the Doctor couldn't: he could keep Rose save. Except he didn't. He hunted her and betrayed her and was ultimately responsible for her death. So when Pete Tyler steps into the lever room, holding a _gun_ in front of him like he's some sort of secret agent the Doctor is less than pleased. Enraged is a better term, or maybe furious. He sticks his thumbs behind his suspenders and steps in front of Rose with as much casual disregard as he can.

"Hello Pete." His voice, however, is anything but casual. "Fancy meeting you here."

"Who are you?" Rose's step father demands—and then he sees the TARDIS. His face turns an impressive red for a moment, but it shifts almost immediately to white. "What have you done?" he shouts. "You crazy bitch!"

"Oi!" Jackie's yell cuts through the room and she storms forward. "That's my daughter you're talking about, mate!"

"Jacks!" He holds up his hands, like he's trying to shield himself and the Doctor almost feels pity for the man, after all, the Doctor has also been on the receiving end of one of Jackie's slaps. "You don't understand, the walls between the worlds—"

"Are perfectly fine," he cuts in.

Pete bristles. "Who are you, then? How do you know so much?"

"He's the Doctor." Rose steps out from behind him and completely ignores the glare he sends her way. "Hello, Pete."

"How can he be the Doctor?" Pete demands. "He looks nothing _like_ the Doctor."

He shrugs. "Oh, bit of radiation, felt like a change." He gestures to the TARDIS. "Still, my ship didn't give it away? No police boxes in this universe, after all, and you've seen it before."

"I hoped I was hallucinating," Pete shoots back. "I hoped she wasn't mad enough to try."

"Oh, I know about madness." There's a threat in the Doctor's voice like dark clouds rolling down over the mountains, like the whine of a Tornado siren and the howl of blizzard winds. "And Rose Tyler isn't mad. The jury's still out on you."

"I was trying to _save people_!" Pete tears at his hair but the Doctor's eyes remain on the gun clutched loosely in his hand. "Can't you understand that!"

The crack of Jackie's palm against Pete's cheek echoes through the room like a thunderclap. "How was killing my daughter saving people!" There are tears standing in Jackie's eyes and it must be hell, caught between two people she loves, but she was a mother first, before she even met this Pete.

"The machine, Jacks, the machine was going to fix things." Pete actually believes what he's saying. "No more stopping riots with rubber bullets and tear gas, no more people trampling over each other, no more Torchwood operating on the fringes of society, no more _fear_. We can be _safe_, Jacks."

"Not like that." She shakes her head. "Not like that, Pete." She takes a deep breath. "I'm leaving you."

"Jacks," he implores, and stretches out his hands.

She pushes them away. "No! I can't live with the man who killed my daughter. I can't."

"Are you happy now?" Pete snaps. He glares at Rose like she is somehow responsible for what has happened. The Doctor puts an arm around her and he catches Amy moving closer out of the corner of his eye. "I was going to make the world a better place, a _safe_ place."

"There's a saying about good intentions," Rose replies levelly. "The path to hell is paved with them. Everyone gets a chance, Pete—and this is yours."

He frowns. "Chance to do what?"

"The right thing. Because it starts out innocuous," she continues, "and using the machine gets easier every time until it's on, constantly, and you've turned the PRGB into the kind of government that we've taken down—forcefully. People don't wake up one morning and go 'Oh, I think I'll become a world-conquering psychopath;' the transition is insidious and slow and it always, always starts with the best of reasons."

Pete is silent for a long moment, and slowly the anger fades until he's left looking tired and small and defeated. "I didn't mean for them to kill you." It's a poor apology and he knows it. "I just—I just wanted it to stop. I wanted them to stop you. But that man—" He shudders.

"He's no one to be trifled with," Sherlock asserts.

"I realized," Pete replies dryly.

The Doctor let's his arm fall from Rose's shoulders and takes her hand. "We have to go," he murmurs. "The longer the breach is open the more unstable it will become. I'm sorry." He squeezes her hand. "But we can't stay any longer."

"Right." She takes a deep breath. "I love you, mum. And I hope—I hope you're happy."

Jackie smiles but the tears are back. "I love you too, Rose."

* * *

The Doctor and Amy bound up the staircase toward the control console. They're ready to be off, eager for another adventure, but Rose pauses for a moment. It's different than when she last saw it. The coral is gone, hidden behind smooth panels and shiny chrome. The floor is transparent and there's a great deal more space beneath the console than she's used to—no mesh panels to pull up. It's very open and futuristic but the hum is still there, and the song in the back of her mind flares into ecstatic trills and arpeggios. She leans against the door and rests her hands on the smooth surface. "It's good to be home," she murmurs.

The Doctor flips switches and presses buttons with abandon. He's putting on a show and Rose smiles softly as he spins around the console. "Rose Tyler!" He calls and she will never, ever get tired of hearing him say her name—in any body, with any voice, there's something special in how he forms those words. "What do you think?"

"S a bit—Spock," she replies.

He groans. "Oh, we're not starting that again, are we? I swear you're obsessed with that pointy-eared menace." Amy sits on the railing and swings her legs, watching. "Getting back is going to be a bit tricky, Amelia," the Doctor warns. "You'll want to hold on to something."

"Has his driving improved at all?" Rose asks sweetly as she climbs the stairs. "He took me home a year late, once."

"Oi!" The Doctor glares at her, but he's too happy to be at all convincing. "My driving is _perfect_!"

"His landings leave something to be desired." Amy smirks, obviously thrilled to find an ally in the strange woman who has joined them. "That last one especially—I'll be sore for _days_."

Rose grabs on to the console. "Just like old times?" She sends a tongue-touched smile the Doctor's way.

He pauses, one hand grasping the final lever, and grins. "Better."

* * *

The Doctor parks them in orbit around Earth, present day because they're very nearly out of milk and Amy fancies a visit to Disney World. He tries to distract her with promises of visiting Disney Planet, but she pulls him aside and mentions that perhaps he and Rose would like some time to themselves and she's more than capable of making herself scarce for a few days at Disney World. In truth—he's a more than a little bit nervous about being alone with Rose. She's not the same girl he lost; she's older, stronger, and she's somehow managed to switch species on him. It shouldn't have been possible, but she's made a career out of doing impossible things and he most definitely needs to expand his definition of that word. Amy is right, which is why she swaggers out the door after a quick hop to Florida with one of the Doctor's sonic credit cards and a promise that he'll be back in three days to pick her up.

He tinkers for a while. Rose is tired, surely, and she could use some time to get reacquainted with the TARDIS and with her space. Her room remains. He couldn't get rid of it, not after what happened—and he couldn't bear to let some stranger paw through their things, so everything from their apartment is here too, stored in one of the TARDIS's multitude of empty rooms. He used to visit her room frequently, in the early days of their separation. It was painful to lie on her bed or sit on the floor, surrounded by her things, but it was a comfort too. The universe around them kept expanding, kept moving regardless of his pain. In her room he could mourn her.

The TARDIS sparks beneath his fingers and he jerks his hand back, swearing. He has a penchant for foul language with this mouth, although she is far too much of a lady to deign to translate anything inappropriate. She trills at him firmly and the corridor that leads to Rose's room (conveniently just down the hall from his own) lights up. "All right," he grumbles. "I'm going, keep your pants on."

The TARDIS hums at him.

He sighs. "Yes I know you're an eleven-dimensional space-and-time ship and thus you don't _wear_ pants. It's a human thing." She hums again. "No I don't understand it either, but I'm not human." The wires he was working on spark again and he jumps back. He throws up his hands and turns away. "I'm going, I'm going!" He waits until he is down the corridor before he mutters, "bloody bossy time ship." She hears him anyway, of course. There's nowhere in the ship where she won't and she flickers the lights at him. It's her equivalent of sticking out her tongue. It makes an amusing picture and distracts him from the discussion ahead—until he's standing outside of Rose's room, ready to knock on her door.

* * *

There is nothing like coming home after a long absence to highlight what has changed—and what hasn't. The Doctor hasn't changed at all; as soon as Amy was out the door he mumbled something about recalibrating the dimensional stabilizer and checking the integrity of the blinovitz buffers and promptly disappeared (figuratively speaking since the floor is, in fact, transparent) beneath the control console. She sat on the steps for a while but he was intent on avoiding her and she has had enough of waiting passively for someone else to be the catalyst.

Her room remains just as she left it. Photos line her mirror and are tacked up on the corkboard that hangs on the wall at the head of her bed. A few treasured snapshots occupy the frames on her nightstand and dresser. Her clothes remain scattered across the floor, and one of her tennis shoes pokes out from beneath the bed. The walls are pink, the floor is pink, and the duvet is pink. She regards the room with mild dismay. So he hasn't changed and her room hasn't changed (even though the ship has, at least on the outside)—but she has.

The clothes are the first to go. Rose packs them away in cardboard boxes that appear conveniently on top of her mattress. She takes down the photos; she will sort through them later, and asks the TARDIS to redo her room. When she opens her eyes there isn't a hint of pink in sight, and she lays a hand on the wall. The ship thrums in her head. She was always aware of a presence on the TARDIS but it's stronger now. It vibrates through her entire being and she understands for the first time how awful it was for the Doctor to be trapped without Her, to _know_ that his ship was lost on Krop Tor and why he was so adamant on finding Her. A crystalline tinkle that sounds like laughter rings out and Rose smiles. "Missed you too," she says.

The new room is much more to her taste. The walls are a cool gray and the carpet is thick and bouncy and a lovely cream color. Her bed is larger and the frame has shifted from simple wood to an intricate wrought-iron affair. Metallic vines climb toward the ceiling from the corners of the bed and twine together to form a frame for the thick draping that hangs perpendicular to the floor. Two nightstands flank the bed like rooks on a chessboard and when she checks the closet Rose notes with amusement that, a besides a selection of dresses that are much closer to what she had in her wardrobe in Pete's World, is a row of neatly pressed oxfords and black trousers—and all the way in the back are a pair of tweed jackets. "Someone knows something," she murmurs and inside her mind the TARDIS hums smugly.

She strips off the dark jumper and jeans she had been wearing and slides her gun in its holster beneath the bed. They haven't talked about that yet, and she's sure a full-blown Doctor lecture is in her future—but not tonight. When Rose turns around again a silky mauve dressing gown sits on top of her duvet. The TARDIS is one part fantastic ship, one part unknowable alien, and one part doting mother. She slides it on, enjoying the way the silk feels against her skin. It's a good color for her, and she's had time to cultivate an appreciation for materials and craftsmanship in Pete's World. That isn't all she's cultivated, though, and she wonders what he'll think when he finds out how, exactly, she found her way back to him. He's always been possessive, after all. When Jack came aboard he confessed that the Doctor made it quite clear that he was to keep his hands off the blonde, or risk inspecting the TARDIS's airlocks.

A knock on the door pulls her from her thoughts. He's trying, she knows he is—and maybe he has changed, at least a little. He never would have bothered to knock before. "Oh," he says when she opens the door. "You aren't dressed. I'll just—wait until you've had a kip."

Rose's forehead wrinkles as she glances down at the dressing gown, which is tied tightly closed. "Doctor, you've seen me in less."

He swallows. "Not, ah—not recently."

Her puzzlement fades to gentle understanding. "Why don't you come in?"

For a moment she holds her breath and he hesitates—but then he smiles at her. "Yeah." She moves towards the bed and he follows her inside. "It's different." He sounds surprised.

"I'm different. Is that okay?" Rose asks evenly.

The Doctor stretches out a hand and cups her cheek. She leans into touch. It's been so long since she's enjoyed simple intimacies and they've always been tactile. "It's brilliant," he replies. There's a tenderness in his voice that makes speaking difficult and she can only smile at him. He clears his throat. "But I should do some scans, run some tests. We need to know exactly what happened—and how."

"Not tonight." She has never been fond of the med bay; there are too many memories of blood and pain associated with the sterile white room.

He frowns. "Rose—"

She twines her fingers with his. "Not tonight, Doctor. Not my first night back. Tomorrow you can scan and poke and prod away—but not tonight." He gives her a look and she sends one of her own right back at him.

The Doctor breaks first. He's never been able to resist her, not since she agreed to come with him. "Fine. First thing tomorrow morning."

"I thought there aren't any mornings on the TARDIS," she teases.

He squeezes her hand. "For you, Rose Tyler, I'll make an exception." She yawns and he presses a gentle kiss to her forehead. "You humans," he tells her. "You'll sleep your lives away."

"Please," she says and grasps his hand tighter as he turns to leave. "Don't go."

"Is everything alright?" He reaches for his screwdriver and she shakes her head self-depreciatingly.

"I just—I don't want to be alone." One corner of her mouth tilts up. "I've had this dream before."

He swallows. "So have I. I've had a lot of dreams about you."

Rose steps forward until a breath will bring them together. There's a look she knows in his eyes, an intensity she's seen in two other bodies and it never fails to get her heart racing—hearts, now. "I'm not a little girl anymore." Her voice is serious and her expression is grave. What happens next will determine her future and she can _feel_ it, the myriad of senses that Time Lords posses lay out the possibilities like roads on a map and if she wishes she can follow each to its logical destination. She refrains. There are more important matters at hand—because she will not be trapped in the same patterns as before. She is different and he is different, and together _they_ could be different.

"I know." He's still taller than she is, even though he's lost a few inches with this incarnation. He looks down at her and all traces of the bumbling child have vanished. He plays the fool so well, he always has, right up until someone underestimates him and he strikes. "If we do this," he continues, "there's no going back. You'll be stuck with me, forever."

"Good," she says firmly.

Evidently it isn't what he wants to hear. "_Good_?" he barks incredulously. "You have no idea what I've done—or even worse, you do. You should run away, Rose, run far away from me. Because if we do this I won't ever be able to let you go—not even to save your life."

Rose takes his face in her hands and forces him to be still. "Good," she asserts once more, "because it saves me the trouble of coming back and kicking your arse myself." He opens his mouth to retort but she presses her lips against his and swallows his words in a kiss. For a moment he is passive against her but then his hands curve around her hips and he pulls her firmly against him. She threads her fingers into his hair—still great hair this time—and tugs, just a bit. His hold on her hips tightens. He pulls back after a moment and she is gratified to note that she's not the only one breathing heavily.

"Bed," she tells him firmly and he nods. "Do we need anything?"

The Doctor blinks at her. "Like what?" Rose's eyes flick down pointedly to where his hips are pressed against hers. "Oh! Oh, no. No it's," he swallows again. "It's been taken care of."

"Have you been making plans, Doctor?" she asks and slides her hands up his chest, beneath the lapels of his jacket.

"I hoped," he replies as she pushes the tweed off of his shoulders. It falls to the floor but his attention is on her. She undoes his braces next, then his bowtie, and then the buttons on his shirt. She's had more than enough practice undressing men, although she's shocked he stays still. The white oxford joins the tweed jacket on the floor. The bowtie she tucks into the pocket of her dressing gown, for later. He's wiry, like her second Doctor, but a bit lankier, and very nearly hairless. A flash of melancholy hits her—he'd been so proud of his 'manly, hairy hands' and the bit of sparse chest hair he'd had the last time she saw him. He tilts his head and she shakes off the feeling; now is not the time for reminiscing and comparing. A mischievous smile spreads across her face and she kneels. He blinks. "Rose, what are you—oh."

She rubs her cheek against his erection—and then she unbuttons his trousers with her teeth. She unzips them too and a sharp tug from her hands has them pooling around his ankles. He's wearing tight pink pants and she cocks an eyebrow at him.

He has the decency to blush. "They're rose colored."

"I knew you were a romantic," she murmurs, and runs her tongue over his stomach just above the waistband of his briefs. He inhales deeply and his fingers curl in her hair. She presses a kiss to his cloth-covered cock and he cups her face.

"Next time," he sighs. "It's—been a while since I've done anything like this and if you do what I think you're going to I'm going to come in that gorgeous mouth."

Rose has never heard him be so obviously sexual before and his words raise goosebumps on her arms and down her back. She hooks two fingers into his pants; one sharp tug and they'll join his trousers on the floor, but he covers her hands with his own.

"You, ah." He gasps when she rubs her cheek against him a second time. "You have me at a bit of a disadvantage." She grasps his wrists and pulls herself up his body. His skin aches and burns for her and everywhere they touch nerve endings spark, looking for the connection his people eventually abandoned. Being a Time Lord is more than having a spiffy ship and an ego the size of Saturn—it's about discipline, protection, and isolation. He has conscious control over almost every biological function his body is capable of performing. He can regulate the oxygen content in his bloodstream, tamp down on pesky hormones (or he never would have survived living with Rose for two years without shagging her senseless on multiple occasions), and even bypass the need to breathe altogether (granted, only for a few minutes). He has been the last for so long and he has never been a very good Time Lord anyway. He was too impulsive for his people, too creative, and far too in love with the universe. He has never been able to achieve the distance they prized, the cold placidness of the observer. For a few precious minutes in Pete's World they were _together_, completely and totally and his mind screams for more of that, for more of her. Time Lords gave up sexual reproduction millennia ago and although they spread the idea that Time Lords were sterile (something to do with their training) he has always had a sneaking suspicion that looming simply gave those in power more control over future generations. He was a fluke, a mistake, and the irony that _he_ should be the one to survive and carry out their legacy is glaringly obvious.

But he's not the last, not anymore, and the council would go into collective apoplexy if they could see Rose. As she told him so long ago, she created herself (though he couldn't understand; he barely even heard her over the roar of his own panic). His hands are shaking as he unties her dressing gown and slides his hands over her stomach and hips. The flutter of her thoughts—so close—dance across his skin like butterfly kisses. She is reaching for him but the connection falters; he doubts there were any telepaths in Pete's World to show her how to use her new abilities. And even if there was, the intimacy required for such a task makes his skin crawl. She is, after all, _his_: always, completely, and totally.

Her dressing gown slips from her shoulders and joins his trousers on the floor and she is gloriously naked. Human and Gallifreyan bodies are nearly identical and he's always had a sneaking suspicion that the endurance of the upright, bipedal form can be traced back to a time when his people did more than simply observe the universe. There are differences, though, and he wants everything with her. His body craves her and his mind craves her and despite what Martha said at the end of the Universe it was never about her appearance (blonde or sorta brown or even ginger—he will love her the same). He is a Time Lord, after all, and regeneration burns away all the surface characteristics that human beings find so important. He has traveled for so long and seen so many examples of beauty that confining his tastes to one culture's ideal in one specific time is stifling. He sees the heart of her, the core of her existence that not even regeneration can change—and he loves her for who she was, and who she is, and who she will be.

Rose moves back until her legs press against the side of the bed. She has lost the playful mischief he loves so much and maybe she can sense the gravity of the moment or maybe she's going to spare him the indignity of being laughed at in bed. She stretches out her hand and he takes it, as he always does.

"Rose." His free hand slides up her arm, along her neck, and over the curve of her cheek. "I never did finish that sentence."

"No," she replies, her voice carefully neutral. "You didn't."

"I love you." When he was with her he thought that he could protect himself by holding back those three words, by pretending that they were just very good friends. He thought that acknowledging the truth that was obvious to apparently the entire universe would somehow rip her from him. In the end he lost her anyway and he learned that the weight of words unspoken was very nearly enough to break him. Saying them doesn't fix things between them, doesn't negate the years they've spent apart or the ways they have both changed—but it's a start.

Rose threads her fingers with the Doctor's and covers his hand on her cheek with her own. "I know." Then she is limp and falling back on to the bed and their twined hands pull him down with her. He puts his hands out to brace himself above her but she twists and suddenly he is on his back. She's quicker than he expects and before his brain can catch up she is astride his thighs. "What's that saying?" she murmurs as she toys with the waistband of his pants. "Right." There's a twinkle in her eyes that says she's not to be trusted, but he's known from the moment they met that she's dangerous. "All's fair in love and war."

His hands roam over her stomach and up to her breasts which are tantalizingly close. They fit in his hands nicely and scrape of his thumb across her nipples elicits a soft moan. He can feel the heat of her center just inches away from where she needs to be and one hand slides down her back to pull her forward. She catches his hands and stretches them out over his head which brings breasts within reach of his mouth and he doesn't complain; he captures one nipple and teases it with his lips and his tongue. Her thighs squeeze around him and he tries to free one of his hands to play with her other breast—only to find himself securely tied to the cast-iron headboard.

"That's cheating." He tries to sound stern but he's never seen her so dominant before and it's arousing beyond belief.

Rose leans forward so that her lips brush against the shell of his ear. "I think you'll find," she purrs, "that I make the rules at the moment." She grinds herself against him and he bites back a whimper. He's been celibate for centuries and he's pretty sure that what she's doing qualifies as inhumane but the flood of hormones that are raging in his bloodstream make thinking difficult and ultimately unnecessary. There is only one way this can end.

She presses kisses to his neck and scrapes her teeth over his collarbone. The Doctor pulls at the knots but a bowtie makes a surprisingly good rope and Rose ties excellent knots. He gets the feeling that she's done this before. She bites him again where his neck and shoulder meet and he arches up into her.

"I think you like that," she murmurs and he can feel her lips curve into a smile. Oh, he does. He likes her lips and her tongue and her teeth against his skin, he likes the way her breasts move when she grinds against him, he likes the way she feels—soft and strong and completely in control—and he likes the way she holds him on the edge.

Rose squeezes him through the soft cotton of his pants and he groans. "There's—yes, please—there's something you need to—oh—to know." She's working her way down his chest and he squirms underneath her.

She licks her lips and runs her fingers over his stomach. "Talk fast."

"Telepathy's involved." Her breasts rise and fall with every breath and it's hypnotic. He has to force himself to look away, to concentrate on the task at hand. The sooner she understands the sooner he can be in her and they can be _together_. "Time Lord biology—I—we're telepathic, _touch_ telepathic, but I set up your shields so that no one could get through them—not even me. And I—we—_need_ it."

"You'd be in my head?" There's something sharp in her voice.

"You'd be in mine," he replies.

Rose studies him for a moment like she's trying to see right through him, and the Doctor gets the strangest feeling that she can, that she's always been able to, and that the only thing that's changed is now she lets him see it. "How much will you see?"

"Whatever you want me to," he assures her. "I can show you how to block off whatever you don't want me to see. Please, Rose. The more skin contact the stronger it is and there is _a lot _of skin in contact."

She slides up his body and this time he does moan, but she unties his hands and lets him sit up. "What do I do?" There's a tremor in her voice he's heard a thousand times before and she's not the same girl she was the last time he heard it, but he isn't exactly the same either.

The Doctor guides her hands to his temples. "Like this." Her tongue touches the corner of her lips and he fights the urge to kiss her breathless. She shifts in his lap and respitory bypass or no, his breathing quickens. He mirrors her position. "Ready?"

"Ready," she affirms.

He takes a deep breath and _pushes_ and everything changes. She's warmth and fire and passion, lightning and fury and the sea in a storm. She's the fathomless ocean and the silence of space. She's _everywhere_, and so is he. Her emotions wash over him in waves—wonder, desire, and love deeper than the world is wide. After all that has happened, all that he has done, she loves him—and she always will. It is endless and golden, binding them together across space and time, past death itself. For what seems like ages they soak in the glory of their own emotions—and then someone moves.

They are back in their bodies in an instant, but still together. Every touch is doubled, every sensation felt twice over. He thrusts into her and she wraps her legs around him and they're so close. They hover at the edge of oblivion, perfectly balanced and straining for more. His hand finds her clit and her nails sink into his shoulder and for a moment nothing exists but they: one soul in two bodies.

Rose comes back to herself slowly. She can feel him now, his heartsbeat regular and comforting against her back and his drowsy thoughts brush against the edges of her mind softly. She smiles and presses back against his chest.

"Penny for your thoughts," he murmurs and his breath against the exposed skin of her neck sends shivers down her spine.

"Mmm." She turns her head—and realizes that his breathing is even and slow and his arm is heavy over her waist. He's asleep. Rose takes a shuddering breath and something catches in her throat. It's been so very long since she's been able to watch him sleep. Now of course she can't—he cradles her, spooned back to front and she knows that they'll have centuries to fall asleep together, but it feels precious now. "I'll tell you in the morning," she murmurs.

And she does.


	7. Epilogue

The dissolution of Pete and Jackie Tyler's marriage makes the front page of every tabloid in London. Jackie and their son Anthony take up residence in a small, exclusive flat in one of the city's pricier districts, but there's no formal separation. John isn't surprised. He saw anger when she confronted Pete, but he saw love as well. She stops by sometimes for tea, and perhaps to talk with someone who knew Rose as her daughter truly was.

John publishes Rose's story on his blog. Sherlock reads over John's shoulder but refrains from making his usual snide comments (why do you need a title? What does the bellhop's name matter? Oh, you've missed the entire point of it!). The title elicits a smile from the standoffish genius, although John's readers react ambiguously to his entry titled 'The Woman.' Most of them seem to think that it's an attempt at science fiction and he doesn't bother correcting them. Whatever they choose to believe, he and Sherlock know the truth. Perhaps it will come out later that Pete Tyler _was_ behind an attempt to adapt alien technology for mid control and maybe it won't—but he kept his promise and _that_ is what matters.

Sherlock rarely speaks of Rose, and when he does it's with a small smile and a grudging respect for the woman who beat him. He keeps her phone; it's incompatible with the other universe's technology (or at least that's the reason she gave for leaving it in her note) and John catches him studying it once in a while. Ultimately life returns to normal at 211 b Baker Street. Moriarty is still at large and Sherlock returns to his search for the elusive criminal mastermind. If he hunts with greater determination, well, John doesn't ask.

* * *

Thirty-three years later and a whole universe away, there is a house at the end of a street in Cardiff, Wales. It's a depressingly normal house, at least on the outside, but its occupants (two women and one fat, orange tabby cat) have a secret. They also have a kitchen, a sitting room, two studies (although one looks a bit like the lair of a rather mad rocket scientist), a cellar, a spacious bathroom, and two bedrooms (one of which has been converted into a library).

The bedroom that is actually used as a bedroom is large enough to comfortably fit the long dresser, wardrobe, and full length mirror that line the walls and the queen sized bed which sits in the precise center of the floor. The walls are a deep blue and a detailed mural of the night sky decorates the ceiling. Light filters through the branches and silver-green leave of the will trees that sway in a gentle breeze outside the large windows and cast dappled shadows on the cream colored carpet. Picture frames adorn the walls and the top of the dresser. A laughing woman with brilliant red hair and a serious looking man with kind brown eyes feature prominently in several. Three diplomas (bachelor's, master's, and Ph.D.) hang in a place of honor, along with a picture of a woman with smiling brown eyes and blonde hair and an awkward young man with ageless green eyes and a tweed jacket, standing in front of a battered blue box.

A slinky black evening gown lies in a pool on the floor next to a pair of dangerously high, strappy red heels. On the end of the dresser the contents of a red clutch spill out haphazardly: red lipstick, an ID card, a thin pen with a strange cap and blue light where the tip should be, a slim mobile, and a fifty-first century sonic blaster from the weapons factory on Villenguard (pre-banana grove, of course). The wardrobe stands open, revealing a row of neatly hung suits and another gown in a deep forest green. A line of shoes—running pumps from the thirty-seventh century—are neatly organized on one side of the wardrobe floor. The other side is a riot of color: sturdy, practical shirts interspersed with low-cut dresses and sophisticated trousers alongside jeans. Shoes sit in a pile: boots and pumps and heels jumbled together in a fantastic display of entropy. Two dressing gowns hang on adjoining hooks on the wardrobe door.

A long, pale arm hangs off the side of the expansive bed. The fingers twitch slightly, crimson nails grasping at empty air. A smattering of freckles cross a delicate nose which wrinkles as the woman frowns, eyes scrunching more tightly shut. Fine lines crease around the corners of her eyes and mouth. Unruly chestnut hair tickles her nose and she shifts restlessly on the edge of sleep.

Melody Williams wakes slowly. Echoes of a dream—something with golden light and a song that resonates—clings to her and for a moment she doesn't know where she is. The TARDIS, she was standing on the TARDIS and Rose was there but she wasn't Rose: she was starfire and Time and the universe shoved into a human shell—but the memories return like the sun burns through early-morning mist and the dream fades away. She was in the TARDIS last night, celebrating. At thirty-seven years old she is the first archeologist to be employed by UNIT. And she was dreaming of Rose because her mum and dad's mad friends were there.

She rolls over and encounters an empty bed; the left side is cold and there's no sign of her lover. Melody is used to waking up alone. Jenny is sincere and thoughtful but trying to keep a Time Lord still is like trying to stop the tide. She contemplates going back to sleep; it is Saturday, after all, and the day is just beginning. A string of curses drifts through the open door and she rolls her eyes. Life is never boring, not living with an alien genius who hardly ever sleeps. She pulls herself out of bed reluctantly and wraps the silver dressing gown around herself.

Cat is waiting for her in his usual place (the patch of sun from the window just outside the bedroom door). Melody ruffles his ears and he purrs contentedly. Cat is easy to please: he enjoys sleeping in the sun, cuddling, being petted, and eating. He also puts up with their hectic schedules and occasionally long absences (a Vortex Manipulator, after all, isn't even as accurate as the TARDIS). Generally speaking, Cat is an idea pet for a Time Lord and her human lover.

"There you are!" Speaking of Time Lords—the resident alien pokes her head through the doorway of her lab.

Melody bursts out laughing. Jenny's hair is cut short (they had to, after that last explosion nearly singed it all off) and her blue eyes are huge, courtesy of a pair of ridiculously oversized goggles she has on. A tan leather apron protects her clothes from sparks and flying shards of metal and she's holding—something with flashing lights and a thousand miniscule moving parts. "What are you doing?"

"Oh, right." Jenny shoves the goggles up on top of her head. "Better?"

Melody brushes a few errant strands of hair back behind her lover's ear. "Much. What helpless bit of tech have you assaulted this time?"

Jenny shrugs. "Just something for Dad. He and Mum are visiting later."

"Your parents are _mental_," Melody calls back over her shoulder as she sashays towards the kitchen. Cat follows her. He is, after all, smart enough to know where the food is kept.

"Says the time traveling archeologist who's married to an alien!" Jenny shoots back.

Melody laughs. "Says the alien who married her!"

Jenny shrugs. "Dad forgot to mention that it's illegal to hold hands on Sevtrimus for unmarried couples, and I didn't fancy spending a night in one of their jails."

"And that's the only reason." Melody gives the Time Lord an arch look but Jenny simply returns it.

"Well," she drawls, and saunters into the kitchen. "The sex is pretty good too, and you clean up rather nicely—when you want to—and you can say raxicoricophallapatorious without stuttering."

Melody twines her fingers with Jenny's. "You know," she begins coquettishly. "Your parents aren't supposed to be here until later, and I think I've recovered from all that—dancing—we did last night."

Jenny gives her a wicked smile; she's good at it in this incarnation. "Is that a hint, Ms. Williams?"

She makes her eyes go wide in that innocent way she _knows_ drives Jenny and the Doctor insane, but for decidedly different reasons. "You know," she replies with exaggerated innocence, "I think it is!"

"I'll race you," Jenny proposes, and Melody never could resist a challenge. She gets that from her father. Rory Williams isn't the sort of man you'd expect to be married to Amelia Williams, former model turned children's book author, but there's more to him than meets the eye. There's more to Melody as well. One upon a time she made a choice, because everyone should get one. This is hers.

The phone rings, but they are halfway back to the bedroom and it's Saturday after all, so they let it go. Cat curls up in the pale April sun, and life continues on as it has for the past decade. In a small house in Scotland Amy and Rory have breakfast together as they have done since they stopped traveling with the Doctor, and somewhen, in a dimensionally transcendent, sentient space-and-time ship the Doctor and Rose are off to save the universe and maybe each other.

And that is how it should be.


End file.
